


Gilded Cage

by wisdomofthesea



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Aggressive!Hawke, Angst, Emotional Abuse, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I swear there's a happy ending, Justice-bashing, Light Smut, Nightmares, PTSD, Panic Attack, Rivalmance, Torture, Viscountess Hawke, berserker!Hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 04:58:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 22,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4466279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomofthesea/pseuds/wisdomofthesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Here at home, the city all but got down on its hands and knees and begged the Champion to rule. As for the rest of us? Eventually we all left the Champion’s side for one reason or another. Well… all of us except for Anders.”</i>
</p><p>The new Viscountess of Kirkwall has a very big secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate summary: Hawke rivalmanced Anders, sided with the Templars, and became the Viscount. Ft. extremely aggressive!Hawke and self-loathing Anders. Hopefully this will explore how a rivalmance relationship could possibly work (and not just end with them hating each other). Because of the way Justice is portrayed in the rivalry, you can expect this to be fairly Justice-negative. Make sure to check the tags, as this story is going to get dark before there's light again. [Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/wisdomofthesea/playlist/3rGmaDAWOj9XZUy1cfLD3X).

The courtyard fell so suddenly silent that Fallon Hawke’s ears rang, the echoes of shouts and the clash of metal on metal fading slowly in the contrast. Broken bronze statues caught the glow from Meredith and the red fires her sword had ignited. Hawke tore her eyes from the courtyard’s newest statue, looking past the ring of Templars to her friends on the edge of the battle. _Where—Flames, she’d better be—_  
  
There. Bethany, safe at last from Meredith and Orsino, helped Merrill to her feet a few yards beyond Knight-Captain Cullen. By the gate, Zevran and Fenris flanked Isabela, one of her arms around each of their shoulders. For a moment, Hawke thought they were holding her up, and her breath hitched on the certainty that she’d finally gotten one of her friends killed—but then Isabela grinned and winked and kissed each elf on his cheek. Nathaniel Howe, the Warden from the Deep Roads, waited beside the trio, one arrow half-nocked, scanning for more threats.  
  
Beside Hawke, Varric’s finger hovered over Bianca’s trigger, but the crossbow was aimed at the ground, the battle already won. Aveline still held her weapons at the ready, but she was no longer thinking of the fight. Her eyes sought Donnic with such emotion that Hawke could feel everything that passed between them—the fervent search for wounds on the other, the relief at finding none, the unspoken _I love you_ s.  
  
Hawke turned to Anders as though it was not too late to give him the same look. He was pale and shaking—and yesterday, she might have taken his hand, but the smell of blackpowder still choked any offer of comfort.  
  
No one wanted to break the stalemate. The Templars looked between her and Knight-Captain Cullen. Hawke had always thought him reasonable, even if he’d planned to arrest her before, so the chance of them all being locked up was low enough, and _Cullen_ —  
  
Cullen bent the knee before her.  
  
One of his men followed suit, and then a second—then five, ten, more, until Hawke stood above thirty kneeling Templars.  
  
_What in the Void are they doing?_  
  
_“My support won’t mean much without the support of the Templars,”_ King Alistair had said, and now Hawke thought: _oh._ _Oh,_ because trying to undo what her fool of a lover had done _would_ earn the support of the Templars, and she hadn’t considered what that meant.  
  
“Knight-Captain?” The query came from the Templar who was last to kneel. He was on his feet again, gesturing at Anders. Cullen rose with a nod, and Anders—Anders, healer; Anders, revolutionary; Anders, _murderer_ —stared at the ground and did nothing.  
  
Hawke felt the battle-rage rise in her, that familiar rush of adrenaline she relied on in the heat of their worst fights. She’d lost herself to it for a moment when Meredith grabbed Anders—  
  
_“How does it feel, Champion, to know I hold the life of what you love in my hands?”_  
  
Hawke had regained control as Meredith stumbled away from them, screaming that she would not be defeated. Now a pulse like a war drum pounded in her ears, drowning out the hum of the red lyrium. The Templars would not have Anders, even if she had to slaughter the entire Order.  
  
_If they want you, they’ll have to come through me._  
  
_I would drown us in blood to keep you safe._  
  
She pushed aside the image of decapitating every Templar and stepped forward to plant herself in front of Anders. “No.” The Templars would do worse than execute him—and Hawke loved him too much to lose him: not to Vengeance’s madness, not to death by her blade, not to Tranquility by the Templars. If that meant her first act as Viscountess was corrupt, so be it. Hawke never claimed she wasn’t selfish. “He is _mine_ ,” she said, holding Cullen’s gaze. The truth of it tasted like ash in her mouth. “I’ll deal with this as I see fit.”  
  
The Knight-Captain studied her. Bethany had said the Templars read mail going in and out of the Circle, and Meredith had known, so Cullen must know about her and Anders too. But he either didn’t want to lose any more Templars or trusted her judgment, so he nodded again and sheathed his sword. The others followed suit, warily but with some relief.  
  
_They’re afraid of me,_ Hawke realized, and that thought was followed by: _Good. They should be._  
  
Bethany and Merrill extinguished the fires. If any Templars objected to the use of magic, none protested. They followed Aveline and Cullen’s directions to collect the bodies of the fallen, and when the Gallows looked marginally less like a battlefield, it was understood that Hawke’s party should leave.  
  
Isabela and Zevran went first, saluting Hawke as they left. The rest of the party trickled out: Fenris to make sure his mansion hadn’t burned down, Merrill to check on the alienage, Varric and Nathaniel to find a stiff drink.  
  
Aveline gave Hawke a tight hug, sword and shield on her back once more. “We have to get back to the barracks, check on the rest of the guard. But I’ll see you tomorrow,” she promised. “We have a lot of work to do.” Donnic took his wife’s hand as they set off down the stairs, fading into silhouettes against fires not yet stopped.  
  
Bethany refused to go. “There are children Orsino didn’t call to fight.”  
  
“The Templars will take care of them.”  
  
“The Templars will terrify them! They’ll think they’re coming to make them all Tranquil. They _know_ me. I can help.”  
  
Her little Bethany, her baby sister, all grown up because of the Circle they’d so desperately tried to keep her out of. Not _proud_ to be a mage, not quite, but no longer afraid of herself. Father’s staff was holstered on her back, the carved Andraste at its tip peeking out from behind her shoulder like a shy child hiding behind its mother. She looked nothing like the scared girl who had left Lothering with damp eyes and unsure magic. “Fine. Be careful,” Hawke warned, and then—  
  
Then it was just the two of them left, the man who destroyed Kirkwall and the woman who saved it twice, facing each other in the wreckage of their combined efforts. Anders looked ready to collapse, and Hawke—Hawke, warrior; Hawke, Champion; Hawke, _Viscountess_ —had nothing to say. Did he know she’d been almost more afraid of him surviving than of him dying? Did he know when she had finally looked at him, it was with none of the desperate affection Donnic and Aveline watched each other with?  
  
Too late for that regret. She took him by the arm, no gentleness in her touch. “Anders. It’s time to go home.”  
  
The words came out a command. Anders obeyed.


	2. Chapter 2

The city held Hawke’s coronation a week after the deaths of Elthina, Orsino, and Meredith. Hawke wore the Viscount’s iron circlet in place of her silverite helm, and held a scepter in a hand better suited for a sword. A banquet followed the ceremony, and when Hawke returned to her estate an hour before dawn she brought Anders a basket of leftovers: honeyed ham, roasted vegetables, and creamy soup in a mug—all cold.  
  
Afterwards, they took up residence at the highest point in Hightown. Bodahn and Sandal moved on to Orlais, Bethany stayed with the Circle, and Orana came to the Viscount’s Keep with Hawke and Anders. The Amell Estate stood empty again, one bedroom still a mausoleum and the others left fallow. It would not be claimed by slavers this time, Anders thought—not now that Kirkwall knew its owner. Hawke was not merely Viscountess and Champion; she was the woman who had killed both Arishok and High Dragon, who had put an end to the blood magic in Kirkwall. She was a warrior with magic enough to turn the city’s Knight-Commander into a glowing red statue.  
  
And he was at her side, albeit not openly. With the risk of running into familiar Kirkwallians or visiting dignitaries, Anders was confined to his room.  
  
_His_ room, not theirs. They tried sharing a bed the first few days, but Anders’ nightmares were worse now than they’d ever been. Hawke couldn’t stay up all night talking him through the dreams like she used to, not now that she needed her sleep to practice diplomacy in the morning.  
  
So Anders had his own room, which he tried to convince himself was a good thing. Hawke’s bed here was too hard anyway. He kept to his bedroom, which—judging from the amount of books on the Qun—had belonged to Saemus Dumar.  
  
Anders didn’t add much to the austere room. He brought his mother’s pillow and left the Tevinter Chantry symbol behind. Hawke might be offended that he hadn’t kept her gift, but the last thing Anders wanted to own was an anti-Divine amulet. Anders didn’t bring a staff; there was no need for one, with the amount of security offered by the walls of the Viscount’s Keep.  
  
It was a lonely room. Vengeance was present but silent, weak and resentful and cowering inside him. There were no more blanks in his memory. Whatever Vengeance was, they were no longer one. A month ago, that might have made Anders happy, but now he just felt empty. He saw Orana more often than he saw Hawke. The shy elf was the only servant in the Keep who attended to him, and Anders had the impression that the others didn’t know he was there.  
  
It was solitary confinement again, like in the Ferelden Circle. Anders just hadn’t expected Hawke to put him here.

* * *

He remembered once telling the Warden-Commander, “All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools.”  
  
Two out of three wasn’t bad.  
  
The first fortnight, Hawke brought both their plates to his room for dinner. She’d always participated in family meals—something the Hawkes had done in Lothering when her father was alive. “No matter how much Carver and I fought that day, we had to sit down and behave long enough to eat a meal,” she’d explained. “Because families have dinner together even when they hate each other.”  
  
It meant a lot to Anders that first night she brought their dinner to his room. Whatever else she felt, she thought him her family, even if their shared meals were silent and uncomfortable. Hawke, it seemed, had nothing to say to him. What little Anders could think of was not worth disturbing the fragile peace between them. He knew the volatility of her temper, knew too that her anger at him was justified.  
  
Then one night, Viscountess Hawke had to have supper with the Lord Chancellor of Tantervale—the next, evening drinks with a delegation from Wycome. The family dinners grew more and more infrequent, and then she stopped coming altogether.  
  
It was little things like that, until one day the absence was not so little. The whole of a relationship was little things, Anders thought: bruises caressed with healing spells until they faded, her showing him he was real when he felt fractured, support on her visits to her mother’s grave, the key to her cellar. Now her door was shut and barred, and those little things had slipped from his hands like water. Without those small things, he wasn’t sure _what_ they were—except that he loved her, and that she still made him feel safe.  
  
They didn’t see each other for days, until one evening Anders ventured out of his room to find her roughly brushing out her dark hair with a gold-handled brush. She stood on the landing below his room’s corridor, watching her reflection in the polished bronze of a massive falcon statue. Her gown was silk the color of a sapphire, with silver trim at the hem and bodice. It reminded him of something Cousland had once worn while holding court in Vigil’s Keep. The dress was the wrong color for Hawke, even with her blue eyes. Anders liked her better in red.  
  
“You look lovely,” he said, leaning on the banister.  
  
The brush’s bristles ripped through a knot. “The Comte de Launcet is having a ball in the _Orlesian fashion_ ,” she said disdainfully, braiding her hair and tying it off with a butterfly-blue ribbon. The plait was off-center, and some strands fell out to rest on her neck. “The Teyrn of Ostwick will be there, and Enchanter Somebody from the College of Magi.”  
  
“Do you…” Anders trailed off. He didn’t _really_ want to know if she had an escort. He wouldn’t like the answer either way.  
  
She put on a mask that matched her dress, silver and smiling and nothing like her. She was made for silverite, not silver. “No one better ask me to dance. I don’t know a step of the allemande.”  
  
In another lifetime, he could have taken her in his arms and danced with her—not an allemande, but something close and slow that ended with her silk dress crumpled in a heap at the side of their bed. He pictured her taking the arm of some Hightown ponce in the Comte’s mansion, pictured her laughing and accepting glasses of wine from titled strangers. “You’ll impress everyone, I’m sure.”  
  
Hawke nodded at her reflection. “Of course. Everyone loves a Champion.”  
  
She was gone before he could say goodbye, down the three half-flights of stairs and sweeping towards the large double doors at the Keep’s entrance. Varric was waiting there between two guardsmen, and Anders heard him jest, “Ready for the ball, my lady?” Anders frowned. He almost preferred faceless nobles to Hawke spending the night dancing with a flirtatious dwarf, even if Varric was their friend.  
  
Anders went back to his room to eat the meal Orana had brought for him. One out of three, maybe.


	3. Chapter 3

Bethany was safe in the Circle before the rebellion. Everyone knew what happened to Ser Varnell and his ilk. Once Bethany sent a letter home saying a Templar had brushed his hand against her behind. The next time Bethany saw him, he had a black eye and a split lip, and two fingers on his left hand were broken and missing their nails.  
  
She knew her sister’s handiwork. Ser Paxley didn’t touch her again.  
  
If being Hawke’s sister protected Bethany, being the Champion’s sister made her untouchable. Hawke didn’t need to beat up anyone who looked at Bethany wrong, because none of them did anymore. The consequence was implied, wrapped in the story of the woman who—after being skewered by the most violent Qunari to walk Thedas—pulled his sword from her stomach and cut off his fucking head.  
  
_Don’t lay a hand on me. You’ll be found out, and my sister will hunt you down and hurt you._  
  
Now Hawke was the Viscountess ( _Viscountess!_ If only Mother had known when she was so set on fixing Fallon up with Saemus Dumar) and Bethany almost a legend in the Circle. She was the most senior enchanter—Orsino had seen to that—and there were a lot of frightened students to help. They’d heard scarier stories than the Harrowing now.  
  
_Don’t use blood magic. You’ll become a monster, and my sister will kill you._  
  
Cullen and the others had taken a lesson from Orsino too. Bethany thought the Templars couldn’t get more watchful than they were under Meredith. She’d been mistaken. Mages were confined to their chambers outside of classes, and the Templars fooled no one by pretending it was a kindness for each mage to have their own room. They just didn’t want mages speaking where they couldn’t hear.  
  
With the Order that much more watchful, Bethany doubted they wanted her to teach the apprentices force magic. But she could get away with healing spells, and with Thrask and the other sympathetic Templars gone, it couldn’t hurt for the younger mages to know how to heal. One of the younger boys (Jonal, fourteen, hauled out of Darktown an orphan eight years ago) was caned last week for failing to return all books to the Circle library. Bethany had put a cooling salve on the welts and murmured worthless comforts while he cried. She only knew how to block a blow, not how to mend it.  
  
But she knew the best healer in Kirkwall, and had a longer leash than the other mages. So Bethany squared her shoulders and put on her best impression of a noblewoman (head held high, back straight, lips together, teeth apart, eyes half-lidded with cool disdain) and told Knight-Captain Cullen, “My sister, _Viscountess Hawke_ , would like me to visit today.”  
  
Cullen didn’t like it, but he sent her to the Keep with Ser Ruvena as her escort. Bethany couldn’t understand why the Templars had accepted her sister’s offer of help when they mistrusted her so, nor why her sister had supported the Templars. She’d only ever supported the Order—sending Feynriel and Grace’s crew there—because she’d thought it could protect mages who didn’t know enough to survive as an apostate. When that had proved gruesomely untrue… _well._ Hawke made short work of people like Ser Alrik.  
  
It was easy to split from Ruvena as Brennan hailed her passing the barracks, and easier still to find the room she knew belonged to Anders. She passed her sister’s office as she went, but knew better than to knock at Hawke’s closed door. Best to wait and see her on the way out.  
  
Anders was absently flipping through a thick book, and gave a start when she walked in. “Bethany.” He stared at her warily. _As if **I’m** the one to fear._ Bethany still remembered Ella, her own dear little Ella, locking herself in her room, sobbing that Ser Alrik was dead because of an abomination—and that Fallon had been traveling with him. “Er. What are you doing here?”  
  
“I was hoping you could teach me healing spells.” Bethany noticed there were no spellbooks in the room, no staffs except her father’s on her back. Fallon wouldn’t keep those things from him, would she? “I need to show the apprentices.”  
  
“Oh,” he said, and shut his book. He sat up and smoothed his robes with his hands. “Okay. Just a moment. The way I healed with Ven—it’s different from how I did it bef… when I was a Warden,” he explained haltingly. Bethany flinched when he mentioned the spirit, and she knew he noticed, and they watched each other in uncomfortable silence until Anders rose.  
  
He put his hands over hers on the staff, adjusting her grip, and then moved her arms through the motions of a spell to restore a single person to health. Bethany had _admired_ him once. He’d reminded her of Father, with his sure strong hands and eloquent opinions about mage rights. She’d thought Anders brave, to escape the Circle and join the Wardens and help Justice. But Bethany had been happy in the Circle for a while. It was better than running—she was so _tired_ of running—and if it was a cage, the bars were pretty and they were mostly taken care of, no matter how much Anders scorned her for accepting that life. As for helping Justice… maybe it was true what they said about roads paved with good intentions. Bethany hadn’t known any Chantry sisters well, but Elthina was one of the few who remembered Mother as a girl. Now even that fragile strand connecting Bethany to her mother was severed.  
  
Anders wasn’t like her father at all, Bethany thought now.  
  
He walked her through a spell to heal a group of four, and wrote out recipes for poultices curing everything from cracked skulls to wrenched arms. After two hours of practice, Bethany knew enough to take care of her kids.  
  
_Her kids._ Fallon wasn’t the only Hawke to make a new family in Kirkwall. And in her family Bethany was mother and protector—not the scared youngest child whose magic had them on the run every other year. She sang Fereldan lullabies when the kids were homesick, dried their tears after nightmares, and kept the Templars at bay as much as she could. Now she had a few more ways to help.  
  
“I’ll send along any other recipes I can think of,” Anders promised.  
  
“Have my sister put her seal on it. They don’t dare intercept anything from her.” Anders must know how her sister dealt with prying Templars. Whatever Fallon had done on Bethany’s behalf, she’d surely done thrice over for Anders. Hawke defended what was hers, and—for whatever reason—she’d chosen Anders.  
  
Anders nodded, understanding, and for a moment he looked like the Anders she’d met in Darktown nine years ago. He was not so haggard and listless then, and had looked more hopeful than haunted.  
  
Another lesson learned. Perhaps spirits were meant to stay in the Fade.  
  
_Don’t talk to demons. You’ll get possessed and destroy the Chantry and kill a hundred people, and my sister will fall in love with you._


	4. Chapter 4

Anders stayed up, sometimes, to make sure Hawke had gone to bed. Ages ago—or perhaps only four months ago—Hawke came to his clinic to take him home if he stayed too late. She’d blow out the lantern and the candles he’d set up to write by, and she’d take the pen from his cramping hand and place it beside the latest draft of the manifesto, where ink was still drying. “Anders, it’s late,” she’d tell him. “Come to bed.” He always let her lead him out of Darktown, through her cellar to the soft bed and warm fire waiting in the estate.  
  
Hawke never came to his room here, but Anders could make sure she didn’t agonize over her work through the night. When midnight came and he had not yet heard her heavy bedroom door open and shut, Anders went searching.  
  
The study door was ajar. Hawke glanced up when he entered, nodded acknowledgement, then returned to the letter she was penning.  
  
“Hawke.” She kept writing. He tried again, and when that didn’t work: “Fallon.”  
  
That got her attention. “What did I say about my name?”  
  
_“You never—even if the world is ending and you want to get in one last ‘annoy Hawke’ point—you **never** get to call me Fallon… unless you tell me your name first.”_  
  
He repeated the words to her. “And?” she prompted.  
  
Anders swallowed. “Hawke,” he decided.  
  
Her serious expression flickered, just for a moment, to a rarely-seen emotion he couldn’t place. Then the mask was back, neither secret and sad nor silver and smiling. She looked weary. “What is it, Anders?”  
  
“I didn’t hear you come to bed.”  
  
“I have a lot to do.” She put a looping signature on the letter, set it aside to dry, and selected a new parchment. “If you need something, get on with it.”  
  
If he _needed_ something? Maker, yes, he needed plenty. He needed _her_ , and he needed to get out of here, and he needed an uninterrupted night’s sleep. He needed to _do something_. Showing Bethany those healing spells had helped. Anders had left patients in Darktown, good men and women and children who needed someone to tend their illnesses. If she was offering…  
  
“I—yes.” He crossed the room like a mouse approaching a cat. “I want to go to my clinic.”  
  
_Like a rat petitioning a falcon._  
  
“No.” She dipped her pen in the inkpot and resumed writing.  
  
“But—”  
  
“You’re dead. Cullen thinks I executed you. You can’t just go walking around Kirkwall.”  
  
A sudden swell of fury rose in him. Anders recognized, this time, what it was (Vengeance, not Justice) but he was swept along with it all the same. Because the thing was—the thing was that Anders had been _willing_ to die. When Cullen gave the word, Anders had waited for the Templars to do what they did best. All of this was his fault—for corrupting Justice, for losing control—and he would pay the price. _Wanted_ to pay the price. He was too dangerous to survive, with Vengeance lurking inside him like a tiger about to pounce. Now he spent every minute afraid that he’d be powerless to stop whatever Vengeance tried next. He lived only because Hawke wouldn’t let the Templars have him—because Hawke loved him. If he was any less to her than the man she loved, he knew she would have put her sword through him.  
  
But she had saved him (the way she always tried to save him from himself)—and now she wanted nothing to do with him. What was the _point_ of it? “You can’t just keep me here like—like I’m just your pet mage!”  
  
Stars exploded before his eyes, and it took Anders several breaths to realize Hawke had leapt from her desk to slam him against the wall. “And _you_ ,” she snarled, “can’t just blow up the Chantry and expect everything to be fine.”  
  
Anders fumbled for words. “I didn’t expect everything to be fine! I expected…”  
  
“What? What did you expect?” One hand was tangled in his hair, holding him against the cold stone. The other pressed the nib of her pen into his bare arm. Her face was an inch from his. “You expected me to kill you?”  
  
_Yes._ He’d hoped she would. But Hawke, so ruthless otherwise, so willing to solve problems with her sword, refused to abandon her friends. She had protected Isabela from the Arishok, Fenris from Danarius, Merrill from her former clan. Anders thought after the destruction of the Chantry, Hawke would finally see him as the threat he was. He was wrong.  
  
“Of course I wouldn’t. I love you.” She searched his face, and didn’t seem to find what she was looking for. She’d looked at him that way before, when a score of mages lay dead in the bazaar and Meredith had left her to deal with him. As though his back waiting for her knife had wounded _her_ instead, as though she did not at all recognize him. Anders swallowed hard. He suddenly felt far away—or no, not far away, more like he couldn’t move at all— _shit, not now_ —  
  
Anders’ mind went blank.

* * *

“ _Enough_.” The voice rattled her teeth. Hawke recoiled like the light under her fingertips had burned her. He turned blank blue eyes on her. “You have interfered for too long. You have blinded Anders to his purpose.”  
  
She narrowed her eyes. “I thought we were done with you.” Vengeance hadn’t taken control since Meredith’s demise, and Anders said the spirit was weak within him. Hawke had assumed Vengeance wouldn’t bother them again. Clearly they weren’t that lucky.  
  
“Even now you do not use your title to champion his cause. You could have condemned the Circle, yet you allow the Templars to continue their wretched work. The mages—”  
  
“—are under no more scrutiny than the Templars. I know the Order is dangerous. I’m keeping tabs on them. We’re not discussing this.”  
  
The Fade shone through the cracks in his skin, filling the room with light and a cutting sense of wrongness. Seeing him this way had always made Hawke so angry she felt sick. Blue and white swirled in his eyes like the heart of a storm. “You care only for Anders and your sister and the blood mage, not for the plight of all mages.”  
  
Hawke was tired of the mages’ plight. “True. If you don’t like it, leave. In fact, leave anyway. We won’t miss you.”  
  
“You cannot claim to love him when you prevent him from acting at every turn. You locked him up just as the Templars did.”  
  
Maker. If he wasn’t in Anders’ body, she’d hit him. _Hit him until he scurries away to the fucking Fade to lick his wounds like the Makerforsaken beast he is—_ “What’s the difference between that and what you’re doing? What have _you_ ever done for Anders? I kept him safe. I _love_ him. You nearly killed him, nearly got him killed. You’re killing him now. Tell me, is he trying to take control right now, or did you strangle the fight out of him? You’re a parasite, and if you cared about Anders, you’d let him go—as he wants. As you _know_ he wants.”  
  
Vengeance was unabashed. “He wanted my help to free the mages.”  
  
“Ten years ago. People change.”  
  
“I am aware.” Vengeance narrowed his eyes in accusation. “You changed him.”  
  
_But spirits don’t change,_ Hawke thought—and then: _except when they do. Except when they turn from Justice to Vengeance._ “So did you. You’re the one he wants to leave, not me.”  
  
Silence. _Good. I was right._ The words had been a gamble, placed with something too important to lose. She’d come off the richer for it this time—but that didn’t change the fact that Vengeance could take control of Anders whenever he wanted. Whatever life they made, they’d build on a foundation that could crumble on Vengeance’s whim. Neither of them could live like that. “While I’m alive, Anders and I make the decisions. If I die, then it’s your turn to protect him. Otherwise, leave him alone.” Hawke stared down his objection. “Don’t argue. This is about what Anders wants.  
  
“And Vengeance?” She crossed the room and grabbed him by the shoulders. Hawke’s voice dropped to a growl that hummed with fury. “If you take control of him without his permission again, I will _burn you out of him_. I’ll destroy you and cast you into the Void. I’ll find a way.”  
  
The cracks in his skin sealed, Anders’ eyes fading to the warm honey-brown color she trusted. He furrowed his brows in confusion, blinking and shaking his head. “Hawke—?”  
  
She released his shoulders. A new wave of exhaustion washed over her, the way it did when she came out of a berserk rampage. A headache had taken root behind her eyes and was blossoming through her temples. Hawke pulled away. “It’s late, Anders. Go to bed.”  
  
Anders did as he was told. Hawke waited to hear his bedroom door shut. She kicked her chair over, following its crash with a frustrated yell. _Stupid—fucking—demon._ Her silverite-plated boots made short work of Marlowe Dumar’s favorite chair. _Get— **out** —of his head—_  
  
Afterwards, Hawke shoved the royal kindling into her fireplace. She’d send someone to pick up a new chair in the morning. That, at least, she could replace easily.


	5. Chapter 5

Bran showed her the chair the way he might introduce an international visitor. “Sylvanwood upholstered with Dales Loden wool,” he said with a flourish. “Imported from Val Chevin.”  
  
_Imported? Flames, it’s only a chair._ “What was wrong with the one I took from the atrium?”  
  
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Excellency, but this is a matter of image. It would be unseemly for the Viscountess to conduct business on that old thing. Your office should project refinement and majesty. It shows our visitors with whom they are dealing.”  
  
Hawke gave an unrefined grunt. “If we’re trying to intimidate our guests, we have better tools than a chair. I can just show them the Arishok scars.”

* * *

Hawke’s head was weightless and stuffed with straw, face numb and swollen. Her stomach was a tight knot of agony, guts filled in with molten iron. When she tried to open her bruised eyes, she found them glued shut.  
  
Bits of memory cut through her mental fog. The vaulted ceiling above her blurred with stars, creating constellations that winked out too fast for Hawke to remember the names her father taught her. Blood in her mouth in a bad way—hers, not her enemy’s; a dying woman, not a reaver. Anders up to his elbows in her blood, hands inside her, desperately trying to repair the damage.  
  
_Right. The Qunari._ Hawke rubbed her eyes with her left hand (the right, she realized, had been bandaged into a club) and tried again. She was in her room in Hightown, sunset-golden light pouring through the windows—and dozing in a chair beside her bed—  
  
His name was a muffled rasp in her mouth. Anders was alert in an instant, on his feet and beside her before she could try to speak again. “ _Hawke_. I’m here. I’m here. Shh, let me check you out. I’ve got you,” and somehow she felt she’d be okay once he said that, the conviction in his words as good as any armor. She relaxed, watching him work with glowing hands and safe amber eyes.

* * *

“Ah—yes,” said Bran, eyes flicking to her midsection as though afraid she’d show him the scar right now. He adopted a look of guileless innocence. “I did consider having the seat made from felandaris and great bear hide, as that seems more your style. But the next Viscount may have, er, more conventionally regal tastes.”  
  
“Hmph.” Hawke regarded her seneschal. “If that chair wasn’t good enough for my office, it’s not good enough for the Guard-Captain’s office either. Get her a new chair. A nice one. I don’t care where it’s from.” Aveline usually insisted she didn’t need anything fancy, but she’d been keeping Hawke sane since she’d assumed the mantle of Viscountess. She deserved something.  
  
“Very well, messere.” Bran sighed. “Anything else?”

* * *

As it turned out, her mouth was stuffed with cotton. Anders gently worked the blood-damp cloths out with his finger. Hawke ran a dry tongue over her teeth. All there—but she remembered spitting chips of them out on the Viscount’s floor. _Maker, he’s a miracle worker._  
  
Anders sat her up, one strong arm around her back, the other arranging pillows in a soft nest on the headboard. Irritation flashed red in her mind—she was a warrior, not a goddamn invalid—but when Hawke tried to support her own weight her elbow buckled and she fell back against the cushions.  
  
Hawke’s second attempt at speech emerged as a ragged wheeze. Anders raised a cup to her lips. The water cleared the sour taste from her mouth, and she tried again. “How long?”  
  
“Almost three days.”  
  
His hair was matted with sweat and grime that had to be that old, stubble grown out long enough that it could only be called a beard. He looked gaunt and haggard, worse than those early Darktown days. Hawke frowned. “Has Bodahn been feeding you?”  
  
Anders laughed weakly, crouched on one knee beside her bed. “Yes. He’s been very helpful. Orana, too.” He gently touched the bandages around her midsection, worried brows smoothing in relief. “It didn’t bleed through this time. Good.” He started unwrapping her. “I have to put a salve on it. You… might not want to look.”  
  
“I’ve had—”  
  
“You haven’t had worse,” he said, suddenly tense. “The Arishok put his sword _through_ you. It went out your back. Three times. Andraste’s blood, I thought—” and here he broke off with a strangled sound and looked away. There was a tremor in his voice when he continued. “Don’t do that again. If you died, I couldn’t—it would kill me to—”  
  
Hawke touched his scruffy cheek. “You saved me.”  
  
“I almost couldn’t. If it weren’t for Elegant’s potions and Thrask’s lyrium…”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous. You saved me. ‘Almost’ doesn’t matter.” Her mind caught up with his words. “Wait. What’s this about Thrask?”  
  
“We ran out of lyrium potions. He and his men arrived with Meredith. They gave me their lyrium so I could keep healing you.”  
  
“And there hasn’t been any trouble with the Templars?”  
  
“None. Thrask came by again to check on you, but… that’s all. We spoke about your injury. He didn’t say anything about mages—except that he’d make sure Bethany could visit when you woke up.”  
  
“Hm.” Best keep an eye on that. Thrask wasn’t much of a threat, all things considered, but she could never be too careful. It was easier with Anders living in the estate—but they’d taken Bethany right from under her nose too. She couldn’t let that happen to him. “All right. Get on with the bandage-changing.”  
  
She watched him unwrap the bandage. The gash across her stomach was on its way to becoming a scar, waxy and puckered and swollen. It was the length of her hand, one finger wide at its largest. Her flesh around the wound was pink shot with red, but Hawke saw immediately that it wasn’t infected. Anders smeared a blightcap paste over the cut, then reached around to apply the salve to its twin on her back.

* * *

“Yes.” Hawke scrawled a note on the Viscountess’ embossed stationary. “Here,” she said, shoving the paper into Bran’s hands. “Get this to Varric Tethras at the Hanged Man.”  
  
The seneschal bristled. “I am not a courier.”  
  
“So send for one. Figure it out. I don’t care. Stop wasting my time.”

* * *

Freshly bandaged, Hawke leaned back on her pillows. Anders’ eyes were ringed with dark circles, but seeing her awake had apparently heartened him. Hawke took his right hand in her clumsy left and tugged. Anders shook his head. “Not a good idea.”  
  
“Why? You can’t do worse than the Arishok did.”  
  
“Don’t say that.” Anders kissed her hairline, then trailed down her face: forehead, brow, nose, until he reached her lips. And _oh_ —the pain in her center all but disappeared when he kissed her like this. Hawke grabbed the collar of his tunic and twisted it in her hand, pulling him closer. Anders parted from her, his left hand coming up to caress her cheek. “Maker, I love you so much.”  
  
“I thought,” she said, breathless, “that I was _everything you hate_.”  
  
“Shut up,” he said, and kissed her again.


	6. Chapter 6

“But Blondie, the people want to know,” Varric had said in the Hanged Man, quill in hand. “You’ve gotta admit that you and Hawke don’t make sense to the casual observer. She’s my best friend too, but she’s like a dragon with a toothache. What do you see in her?”  
  
Anders hesitated for so long that Varric thought he wouldn’t get an answer. “I know I’m safe with her,” he said eventually. “She makes me feel like myself, like there’s more of… _me_. I can forget about Justice. I feel like a whole person because of her. I haven’t felt like this since… since before I was a Warden.”  
  
Varric wrote it down.

*                            *                            *

“Good, you’re here.” Hawke leaned forward in the throne. “I need a favor.”  
  
“‘Hi Varric, how are you today?’” he said, imitating a Fereldan accent. “Not bad, Hawke, thanks for asking. ‘I appreciate you coming up here on such short notice.’ Hard to say no when the Viscountess summons me, but I’d come anyway for you, my friend. Love what you’ve done with the place, by the way.” The old banners (House Dumar’s gold falcons on fields of navy) had been replaced with white ones bearing the red symbol of the Amells. Dumar’s golden statues had remained on the grounds that falcons were all but indistinguishable from hawks. The overall effect was surprisingly tasteful.  
  
“If you’re done talking to yourself, can we get on with it?”  
  
Hopeless at conversation, this one. He’d gently recommended she consider acquiring some social graces if she planned to lead the city-state. Hawke had said she didn’t damn well plan this—these sort of things just _happened_ to her—and the Templars should’ve considered what putting her in charge meant for their diplomatic relations. She had a point, and Varric was good enough at conversation for the both of them, so he didn’t mind occasionally taking care of official business for Hawke. Theirs was, as ever, a glorious partnership. “For you? Anything.”  
  
“You got a chocolate pie for Isabela’s birthday a few years ago, remember?”  
  
_Huh_. Not what he’d expected from Hawke, but Varric smiled at the memory. That particular party was the first time Hawke agreed to go out after Leandra’s death. It was also the last time they’d given Merrill mead without supervision. “Sure,” he chuckled. “We thought Blondie would eat the whole thing before Sunshine and her escort even showed up.”  
  
“Can you get another one?”  
  
“You mean you can’t? I thought all you had to do was slap a seal on a letter, and they’d send whatever you wanted with an apology for not thinking of sending it sooner.”  
  
“The north isn’t trading with Kirkwall,” Hawke said through gritted teeth. _Ooh, sore spot._ “Tevinter is pissed about the mages, Par Vollen’s pissed about the Arishok, and Seheron doesn’t want to piss off either of them. Haven’t heard from Rivain. Can you help or not?”  
  
Interesting, that. He filed it away for further consideration. “I’ll see what I can do. It’ll be two weeks at least.” Varric quirked an eyebrow. “Lover’s quarrel? I usually go with flowers.”  
  
“I wasn’t inviting you to pry into my personal life.” Hawke glared for a moment, then softened. “But it’s something like that. I… thought he’d like it. Anything else to report?”  
  
“Two things, actually.” Andraste’s tits, he really didn’t want to mention either of them. “Ser Moira has been asking about the Darktown healer. She doesn’t seem to believe Blondie’s dead.”  
  
“Tell Ser Moira that she can ask Alrik and Varnell how well arguing with me goes for Templars.”  
  
“You know intimidation isn’t my style.” Varric kept his distance from her bloody problem-solving methods. Hawke got results, but not the kind he wanted to be a part of—though he’d be lying if he said he’d never used her against Carta pressure. Give him a network of Lowtown spies and well-placed bribes any day; he’d leave the threats to her. “I’m more of a solve-the-problem-with-gold kind of guy.”  
  
She accepted that. “Then just tell her she has a standing appointment with the Viscountess. If she has suspicions, she should ask me directly. I’ll set her straight.”  
  
_Oh, Moira. I give you twenty gold to keep your mouth shut and you can’t leave well enough alone._ “I’ll let her know. The other thing—our friend in Minrathous had an idea. You won’t like it,” Varric warned, for the benefit of anyone who had to interact with Hawke in the next hour. “The Rite of Tranquility could cut Justice’s connection without affecting Blondie.”  
  
“‘Could.’” Her jaw tightened. “Or it could destroy Anders. It could make him Tranquil and give Vengeance free reign. Right?” Varric shrugged. Damned if he knew anything about demons. “You’re right, I don’t like it. Tell him to come up with something that isn’t insane.”  
  
“Already done.” Not quite the phrasing he’d chosen; there were few possession experts, and even fewer willing to work with the Free Marches. Varric didn’t want to step on the toes of someone with whom he was still dancing. But this was a matter of Blondie’s safety, so he knew what Hawke would say. _Not good enough. Find something else._ For all her wintry harshness, Anders melted Hawke like a spring thaw.  
  
_Too poetic? Maybe… softened her like steel in a forge._ He turned the words over in his mind, tasting how they’d sound in the retelling. _Not bad. Better save that one for later._  
  
Regardless, he couldn’t blame her—the idea of Anders Tranquil made him feel sick too. There had to be a better way to get rid of Justice, or else—  
  
Well. He didn’t like the _or else_. He didn’t want to believe Blondie was beyond help. But the _Chantry_ —the Chantry Varric had been quietly donating to for years, even if he never attended services. All those sisters and mothers—and Anders had once pointed out the difference between killing an attacker and killing someone defenseless. Arson at the Chantry was definitely the second, and if he didn’t care about that any longer—  
  
On Varric’s way out, he stopped at the door and turned back. “You can’t save everyone, Hawke.”  
  
Hawke fixed her gaze on him. Her eyes were like ice chips. “You think I don’t know that?” she said eventually. Varric could see the weight of those long-carried deaths on her shoulders. “I don’t care. I don’t want to save everyone. If I save one person, it’ll be him.”

*                            *                            *

“So about you and Blondie…”  
  
“If you want to lecture me again about getting involved with a _possessed mage_ , shove it. I won’t change my mind.”  
  
“No, no, not interfering. I’m just trying to figure out how you made up your mind in the first place. You’re not a huge supporter of mage rights.”  
  
“I don’t have to be.” Hawke waved for Corff to bring another round of cider. “I love him. Aren’t you the one who says not to mix politics and pleasure?”  
  
“I say a lot of things. I also say that that’s easier said than done.”  
  
“What are you looking for, ladies’ market gossip? I’m not a besotted bride. We want to take care of each other, and we do. That’s all I need.” She gulped down half the new tankard. “Plus the sex is good. Put that in your bloody book.”


	7. Chapter 7

“There are new rumors going around about why I’m not seeing suitors,” Hawke said. She put a mug of ale on Aveline’s desk. “Even better than the ones that I’m secretly married to Varric or that I was seducing Meredith. Apparently I’m sleeping with you and your husband.”  
  
Two score reports about a gang of apostates that had cropped up last month, and the Templars and the Guard were arguing over whose problem it was. But the Viscountess of Kirkwall had to gossip and drink with her, so Cullen’s call for Aveline’s verdict had to wait another day. Aveline moved the papers to a drawer and smiled at Hawke instead. “Together, or behind our backs?”  
  
“All three of us. We fuck on your desk a lot.”  
  
“Not on _your_ desk?”  
  
“Afraid not.”  
  
“That’s quite the scandal,” Aveline agreed. Donnic would get a laugh out of it. _And then joke that we could invite the Viscountess to join us the next time we’re working late._ She took a pull from her stein. “Rumors aside, how are you holding up? Brennan said you kicked a courier down the stairs this morning.”  
  
“Brennan was wrong,” said Hawke. “I shouted for him to get the hell out of my office, but I didn’t touch him. If I get one more message from Starkhaven, I’m going to declare war. I haven’t even answered the last one they sent me yet.”  
  
“There’s always paperwork in the Keep. You have no idea how many reports I have to read.”  
  
“My desk has so much paperwork on it that no one could fuck there. And you became Guard-Captain because you can guard _and_ organize patrols. They made me Viscountess because I killed Meredith and Orsino. But the Viscountess doesn’t get to kill anyone. It’s all making nice with other leaders and going to absurd parties with stupid people.”  
  
It was, when Aveline considered it, a miracle that Hawke’s temper didn’t have half the Free Marches attacking them yet. _Hell, not even the Free Marches_ —the whispers of an Exalted March grew louder every day, no matter how the mages cooperated.  
  
They drank in silence for a few minutes. “Aveline?” Aveline waved a hand for Hawke to go on. “Anders is…” And here Hawke paused, searching for a word, for so long that Aveline thought she’d given up on the sentence. “Miserable. Being cooped up reminds him of the Circle, but there’s nothing else for it. It was easier before all the,” she gestured towards her unfuckable desk of documents, “Viscount responsibilities. I was around more the first few weeks, even if I didn’t have much to say to him. Now he’s only getting worse. Obviously he can’t go about the city.”  
  
The word was that Hawke had put Anders to the sword herself. Aveline encouraged the rumor, but mutters in the marketplace told her that not all of Kirkwall believed it. “Could a disguise…?”  
  
Hawke was already shaking her head. “Bethany suggested that. It’s too risky,” which meant Hawke was more concerned for Anders’ safety than she cared to admit. “Some of the Templars are already suspicious. Have to deal with that. And our friends aren’t exactly interested in stopping by for tea with him.  
  
“I’m sure he thinks _I_ hate him,” Hawke added, more annoyed than upset. “I don’t _hate_ him. I told him he was wrong about Justice—about Vengeance—and he _was_ —but I understand why he did it. Hell, I might have done it if I were him.” Aveline couldn’t deny it sounded like the kind of thing Hawke would do. If Anders had convinced her the Chantry needed to go, it would’ve happened sooner, and the explosion would’ve been ten times bigger. “It would’ve been different if he’d told me what was going on. But he didn’t listen until it was too late. He just kept saying he was a liar, a monster. He’s not. I’ve killed enough monsters to know. He’s just a man who made stupid choices. Except…”  
  
Aveline raised her eyebrows. “Except?”  
  
“Once we were arguing and he said, ‘There’s no one in Kirkwall I wouldn’t kill to see mages free.’ Just like that. He’d kill _anyone_ in Kirkwall if it meant mages could be free.” Hawke drained her cup. “I think about that a lot nowadays.”  
  
She wondered why _that_ bothered Hawke—Hawke, who would kill anyone in Kirkwall to see her family safe. Hawke was, if not an indiscriminate killer, never forgiving in the face of a stranger’s misunderstanding. She was more likely to cut off her own leg than to harm (or let harm befall) one of her own. There were dozens of Free Marches graves to prove it. Hers was an attitude poorly suited for a Viscountess of Kirkwall, but the city was not under siege yet. Aveline had counted worse outcomes as victories.  
  
After a long pause, Aveline said, “That sounds more like Justice than Anders.” She’d never felt sure which one she was speaking to at any time. She suspected Justice took the reins more than when glowing eyes betrayed him. Aveline always wondered just how separate the two were—but she knew, now, about the blanks in Anders’ memory, about his fear of losing himself to Vengeance, about the broken thing he’d become after the Chantry. She didn’t understand (and she didn’t want to, because he might not be a monster but parts of him were in some ways monstrous), but she could see the depth of his regret.  
  
She could even believe that Vengeance had taken him over, because that was the only thing that made sense. What had Justice done?—nearly killed that young Circle mage, for one, and wrested control from Anders too often, according to Hawke. _Anders_ was a man who set out milk for stray cats, who called up wisps of frost to protect his friends from heatstroke climbing Sundermount, who once rushed to Hightown in the middle of the night to save one of her guards after he’d come off the worse confronting a mad cultist. A thousand small acts said Anders was a healer. Justice was the madman.  
  
Aveline once thought Anders and Hawke brought out the best in each other. Hawke was never gentle, but she loved Anders. It showed in rare affectionate touches and bloodied Templars warned away from Darktown. The happiest Aveline ever saw Hawke—especially after Leandra’s murder—was with Anders beside her. Anders hadn’t turned himself in after the destruction of the Chantry because Hawke would not allow it, and while Aveline was quietly reproachful of this, she couldn’t say she wouldn’t make the same choice. Anders, meanwhile, could only set aside his pro-mage crusade for Hawke, and the way he looked at her when she couldn’t see reminded Aveline of Donnic. Whatever else Anders was, he loved Hawke.  
  
“Do you know what I always remember?” Aveline said at last. “You wouldn’t have heard—being unconscious, usually—but any time you went down in a fight…”  
  
_“’No! Don’t be dead! **Please**!”_  
  
Aveline couldn’t quote his panic as well as she would’ve liked, but it would have to suffice. “I’ll never forget how desperate he sounded. Not til the day I die,” and as she said it Aveline knew it was true, another thing seared forever to her memory like her father’s hand in hers, and Wesley’s face as his life left him, and the embarrassment of that first coast patrol with Donnic, and the night Kirkwall’s sky burned red.  
  
Whatever she thought of Aveline’s words, Hawke kept it to herself. Aveline was a damned fine interrogator, and when she flat-out told Hawke she knew she was holding something back, her friend said, “He’s been a Warden eleven years now.” Aveline pictured Wesley, veins run black as the corruption took him, and understood. The darkspawn taint was a bigger threat than the Templars or the Divine, as big a threat as Vengeance. Hawke could not kill it or lock it out to keep Anders safe.  
  
Nothing any of them could do for that. “If it makes a difference,” Aveline said finally, “I have an idea that might help with the loneliness.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought! Aveline is probably my favorite Dragon Age character so I hope I did right by her.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes about this chapter! First: Anders is back in the story, yay. Didn't mean to only have him in flashbacks for a few chapters, but what can you do? We're back to his perspective for this chapter, at least.
> 
> Second, remember how I gave this story tags like "torture" and "nightmares" and "PTSD," and then none of those things really came up? Yeah, you're gonna see them here. Consider yourself warned.

Anders opened his eyes to darkness. Darkness and silence, and a thin straw mat beneath him. He knew this room—knew every stone, knew how many paces it took him to walk the length of it, knew each groove in the iron door. He was in the Circle tower, in the cell he’d spent a year in.  
  
Anders’ breath stilled in his lungs. Kinloch Hold, and this room again. They’d hauled him back to the tower after seven escapes and a stint in the Wardens, and they’d do worse than solitary confinement this time. It’d be Tranquility, if they didn’t execute him. All these years of struggling, and _hurting_ , and fighting for his freedom—and his story ended here, in a lonely cell in the tower he’d spent nearly his entire life in.  
  
The latch clicked, and Cullen entered, carrying the sunburst brand in one hand and an iron collar in the other. Karl followed at his heel, the mark of Tranquility plain on his forehead. He held a needle and a length of thick black thread. Cullen nodded, and Karl approached.  
  
Anders’ blood froze in his veins. He remembered a Qunari mage with its mouth sewn shut, leashed and bound. He scrambled to his feet. “No,” he said. His voice cracked, throat dry and raw from disuse. “Karl, please, don’t.”  
  
“Struggling is not advisable.” Karl threaded the needle. “You will understand soon. It will be much easier if you allow me to complete my task without resistance.” The brand glowed red in Cullen’s hand.  
  
“No, Karl, please.” Karl had never looked at him like this before—no kindness in his grey eyes, no gentle affection. Anders looked to Cullen. “Stop him, please, _please_ , tell him to stop. I’ll do anything, please.” Cullen said nothing. Anders backed away until he hit something hard. _Not the wall—_  
  
Strong hands closed around his wrists. “Only one thing to do with a mad dog,” she said. Hawke’s boot found the back of his legs. His knees hit the ground.  
  
“Hawke,” he begged. Her grip shifted, and one hand came around to hold his jaw in place. She was too strong for his struggling to make a difference. Anders reached instinctively for his last line of defense—Justice and the blue-white force of the spirit—and found nothing. Karl knelt before him and took Anders’ face in his hand.  
  
Anders screamed when the needle pierced his lips, nearly tearing the thread from Karl’s fingers. Hawke said nothing, but clamped her hand tighter around his face and forced his jaw shut again. Karl worked impassively and quickly, with long cruel pulls of the needle. Anders’ cries died as whimpers in his mouth behind the tight string. Saltwater mixed with the blood on his tongue.  
  
Cullen locked the metal collar around his neck and shoulders. The weight crushed the air from his lungs, and he would have collapsed to the cold stone if Hawke hadn’t given the collar’s chain a sharp yank. The lyrium branding rod glowed in Cullen’s hand as he took Karl’s place. Anders shut his eyes against the red-white corona. The image danced behind his eyelids, blinding him, consuming him like the blaze from a pyre.  
  
Three heavy blows on his door startled Anders out of the dream. He lay paralyzed for a moment, damp from sweat and shivering. The page he’d fallen asleep reading was stuck to his cheek. Anders gingerly peeled it off, and his eyes found the words Saemus Dumar had underlined.  
  
_Do not fear the dark. The sun and the stars will return to guide you._ The Qun was in parts strangely comforting, but Anders thought of the needle and pressed a trembling hand to his lips. Even he didn’t deserve a saarebas’ fate. Anders pictured Ketojan, so defeated that he knelt willingly to let the arvaarad run him through.  
  
Then again, he’d tried to do the same thing. It just hadn’t worked.  
  
He read the line a few times, focusing on its rhythm more than its meaning, until his breathing leveled and his hands stopped shaking. He’d had nightmares before, and worse than this one. Karl was ash and bones, and Hawke would keep Cullen away, and Hawke would kill Divine Justinia Herself before she’d help anyone hurt Anders.  
  
She knocked again, more insistently this time. When he could, Anders sat up and straightened his robes. “Come in.”  
  
Hawke carried a basket on one arm. She wore an indigo tunic, belted at the waist and embellished with dark red embroidery. Ah, well, Anders always appreciated the sight of her in armor, but he couldn’t fault the finery highlighting her figure. The sight of her was a comfort in spite of his guttering panic, her betrayal in the nightmare wiped away by her presence. She was here, and as long as she lived he was safe, from Templars and Justice and anything else that might come.  
  
She nodded to the book lying open on his bed. “Going _viddathari_ on me?”  
  
It sounded like she didn’t approve. _Well, no surprise there_ —she hadn’t thought much of the Qunari. “I just… needed something to read.”  
  
“I can get you other books.”  
  
Anders attempted a smile. “The Qun might be the only thing in this city not written by Varric.”  
  
She laughed at that, genuine and sudden as the first pop of sparks from a newly-kindled fire. Then the embers cooled. “I’ll find other books,” Hawke repeated, and the offer became an order, the way she’d commanded him to help the Templars. _No_ —Anders didn’t regret that; helping was the right thing to do. The resentment was all Vengeance’s, and his thoughts were easy to separate from Anders’ now. “I have something for you.”  
  
“For me?” Anders took the basket and pulled aside the cloth that covered it. Inside slept a white kitten no larger than a dinner roll.  
  
Anders looked up at Hawke. She was pleased with herself. “You wanted a cat. Darktown was no place for one, but we’re not in Darktown anymore.”  
  
The kitten rolled over and stretched, showing her points. Paws, ears, tail, and nose were all delicately brindled with gray. A ribbon of periwinkle silk was tied around her neck. “She’s beautiful. Does she have a name?”  
  
Hawke shook her head. “Aveline suggested Fionne, after the Ferelden queen. Isabela said ‘pussy’ and then laughed for five minutes. Merrill suggested ‘Lady Pearlpaw.’ But it’s up to you, so if you like Ser Pounce-a-lot the Second…”  
  
Anders discarded the first two options offhand, and considered others as the kitten blinked huge blue eyes up at him. “Lady Pearlpaw suits her.”  
  
It did, and it could suit him, too—just as finery suited Hawke as well as armor. Ser Pounce-a-Lot was a name for a warrior’s cat, for a pet that visited the front lines of battle in his owner’s knapsack. Lady Pearlpaw was an indoor cat, a tabby point with a long fluffy tail and soft pink paw pads. A good cat, and a good name, for someone who’d stay home.  
  
_For the Viscountess’s pet apostate,_ hissed Vengeance, and the saarebas with his collar flashed in his mind again. But Anders was strong enough to control the monster inside him now. He put his hand in the basket and scratched under the kitten’s chin. “She’s wonderful. Thank you.”  
  
The room felt less small with Lady Pearlpaw. She had a satin-lined basket but slept in his bed more often than not. Anders conjured spell wisps to entertain her, little bobbing lights that she danced around and batted with her paws. When he couldn’t feel like himself, the kitten sat in his lap, and her soft fur and gentle purring grounded him. Better yet, Hawke visited more often, usually bringing a new toy for the cat and a new book for Anders. She was distant still—and maybe it would be that way from now on—but she was in the same room as him. That was something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next: one chapter from Orana's perspective, and Hawke (as promised) deals with Ser Moira. Then back to Anders for the rest of the story, I promise.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for torture, blood, and related themes. If you would like to know more about how much I freakin' love Orana, you should comment because I'm ready to talk about her any day.

Mistress Hawke sent a messenger for Orana at half-past ten. “Set up one of the lower rooms for a visitor.”  
  
Orana knew what Mistress Hawke meant by the request. She’d made it before, when the Orlesian foreman hauled in traitors to their company, or Hawke’s uncle’s debt collectors came for their fees. Orana put a simple table before a wooden chair, and arranged a pitcher of water, a pair of pliers, and a sharp knife upon it. She covered the tools with a heavy cloth, and hung a cord of rope on a hook beside the door that exited to a Hightown back alley. She rolled up the large floor rug and propped it in the corner where it wouldn’t be damaged. It was a beautiful rug, with intricate blue and gold and white patterns that reminded Orana of the fine rugs in Mistress Hadriana’s house. Orana couldn’t let it get stained, even knowing Mistress didn’t care about things like that.  
  
She told Mistress Hawke that everything was in its place. Hawke nodded her approval. “Good. Our guest should walk out of here before noon.”  
  
Which meant Hawke wasn’t going to kill the woman. Orana curtsied and said she would come at twelve to tidy up. Hawke said that was fine, and Orana left to tend to her other duties.  
  
She tidied Mistress Hawke’s chambers, fluffing the pillows and making the bed with fresh linens from the laundress. She sent one of the scullery boys to fetch a ham for supper, and one of the housemaids to draw a bath for Hawke. (That still felt new after all these months—being in charge of the household, with other servants following her orders. Papa would be so proud of her.) At half eleven she delivered lunch to Master Anders.  
  
Her arrival seemed to startle him from a trance. “ _Orana._ I… I thought I heard someone scream?” he asked. There was something wild in his voice, something fevered and anxious. His eyes darted like a caged thing.  
  
One of her first nights in the old house, Orana had woken up in the middle of the night because she heard a man screaming. Now, prying into this kind of thing was an easy way a slave could get herself beaten (Hawke said _servant_ , and that meant something besides her wages, but Orana still didn’t know what), so Orana lay in bed until the shouts faded away. She’d asked Bodahn the next day if there might be restless spirits in the house, and the dwarf had chuckled a little and said no. “Master Anders was a Grey Warden,” he said, which meant nothing to Orana. “They get nightmares.”  
  
_Ah._ Orana knew nightmares. In Minrathous, they were calmed in whispers behind closed doors, fingers pressed to lips before a careless cry could wake Mistress Hadriana. (Hadriana had a very important job—she was a _magister_ —and she needed her sleep.)  
  
She learned over the years that Anders didn’t just have nightmares. He stayed in Darktown late into the night. At times, his mind seemed far away; he stared unfocused into space, like he was looking right into the Fade. He got into moods sometimes, high moods that came with frenzied activity and darker moods in which he didn’t do much of anything. But—he was nice to Sandal, who was odd but a good lad. He healed her blisters when she accidentally burned herself cooking. He wanted to learn to play music—wanted to learn from her, and never grew angry with her when he didn’t understand something. He was a mage, but acted like ordinary people were equal to him. He was a kind man—kind in a way she could trust; kind in a way that did not leave her wondering what he really wanted from her—and gentle where Hawke was severe. If Anders had moods and nightmares, well, that was hardly her business. Orana left a kettle on coals in case he wanted tea, and learned to sleep through cries in the night.  
  
So when he asked now, she knew he was worried about hearing things that weren’t really there. “Mistress had an unfriendly visitor. A Templar,” she added so he knew what she meant.  
  
Even as his shoulders relaxed, Anders’ expression shifted from fear to alarm. “A Templar?”  
  
Orana said, “Don’t worry. Mistress will take care of it,” in what she hoped was a reassuring tone. Anders gave a slow nod, so it must have been the right thing to say. She cleared his breakfast tray, curtsied, and left the room.

* * *

The first time she heard one of Hawke’s guests screaming in real pain, Orana had not gone to investigate. Bodahn had found her anyway, sitting on her bed reliving old sorrows. “Don’t you fret about that, Orana,” he said kindly. “Messere Hawke has, ah, a rough way of dealing with some people, but she’d never hurt you.”  
  
Orana wondered if Bodahn knew how she met Hawke, all covered in Hadriana’s people’s blood. “I know.” It was the biggest difference between her old mistress and her new one. Mistress Hadriana hurt people for punishment, or because she thought it was fun, and she would not hesitate (Orana knew now) to hurt someone she’d liked the day before. Mistress Hawke did it because she needed to protect someone: her workers, her uncle, her sister, her lover.  
  
When an hour had passed, Orana went to the study. Mistress Hawke was on her knees, armor scraping on the floor (she was always in armor), scrubbing the tiles with a boar-bristle brush. A pail of soapy water and a mound of bloody rags sat beside her. She looked up. “Orana. Why don’t you get out of here? I’ll take care of this.”  
  
Orana looked at the grout that separated the tiles, still stained for all of Hawke’s scrubbing. She looked at the desk, where blood had soaked into the unfinished grain of the wood. She curtsied and left the room.  
  
Orana knew what to do about blood. For Hadriana, she’d cleaned it from cotton sheets and marble floors, from steel blades and wooden tables and leather straps. She’d promised to serve Hawke just as well as she’d served the magister, so Orana went to the kitchen and mixed equal parts water and vinegar in a bucket. She took two dishes, and filled one with vinegar and the other with saleratus.  
  
She went back to the study with her supplies, dishes balanced on a tray. “This will take the stain out of the grout,” she said, exchanging her bucket for Mistress’ pail of bloodied water. “I can take care of the desk, Mistress,” Orana offered. Mistress Hawke had already mopped up the blood and rinsed the table with soap and water. Quietly getting to work, Orana sprinkled the saleratus on the wood. She dipped her clean rag in the vinegar and scrubbed.  
  
Hawke was impressed.  
  
After that first night, it became routine. Mistress Hawke had an unfriendly guest once every month or two, and when they’d left, Orana helped Hawke clean up. Hawke made conversation, usually about her sister but occasionally mentioning Anders or her other friends. Orana got used to the blood. She never saw a body, but she knew sometimes that Mistress Hawke must have killed the guest—some days there was so much blood she knew no one could’ve walked away from that. Occasionally, Templars came—Templars who left with broken fingers and chipped teeth and black eyes.  
  
Hawke never killed the Templars.  
  
She didn’t kill Ser Moira either, but the woman was still there when Orana arrived at noon with her cleaning supplies. Orana heard Hawke speaking behind the door. “If you still want to be a fucking Templar, fine. You could try Cumberland. Or you could follow Ser Jerran—I hear he left to join the Qunari. But you’re going to get out of the Free Marches before the week is out. Got it?”  
  
The answering voice was thick. Orana suspected a broken nose. “The Order will hunt down your apostate. I’ll tell the Knight-Captain.”  
  
“Now, that’s a terrible idea,” Hawke said, as casually as one might dismiss a poor wardrobe choice. “Your parents live in Kirkwall, don’t they, Moira? I’m sure they’d be delighted to receive an invitation from the Viscountess.”  
  
“Fuck you.”  
  
There was a _slam_ , and if the nose hadn’t been broken before it certainly was now. “Come on, you’ve got to be smarter than this. Granted, you weren’t smart enough to catch a maleficar before he could kill my mother, or to take a _fucking hint_ from Varric. But you must have some self-preservation instinct. So I’m telling you: get out of the Free Marches.”  
  
Ser Moira whimpered an agreement. “Good. Now get out of my sight.” Stumbling footsteps, and then the click of a latch. “There’s a caravan headed west tomorrow morning. I suggest you take it. This is your last chance, Moira. If I see you again, I’ll cut your fucking throat.”  
  
The opposite door shut. Orana waited a slow count of fifty before she went in, armed with her cleaning supplies. Mistress Hawke was mopping the table with the rough cloth. Ser Moira’s blood was spattered across her face like freckles. “I’ll take the desk if you’ll do the floor and the tools,” Hawke said. Orana looked. Most of the blood was on the table, though Ser Moira had left a trail from chair to door. The pliers were clamped around a narrow fingernail.  
  
Orana set the tools aside to clean in the washroom. She dipped one of the rags in the vinegar-water and went about her work. Hawke didn’t let the silence lie for very long. She talked about Bethany’s students in the Circle, about how Anders had trained his kitten to wave her paw on cue.  
  
After a quarter-hour, Hawke said, “When we’re finished here, I’ll need a bath.”  
  
“Lindy has one waiting already. With the ginger bath salts.”  
  
Mistress Hawke’s brush stopped scraping across the table. Orana looked up, expecting new orders. Hawke gave her a rare smile, not quite as predatory as her usual wolfish grin. “Orana, you are perfect,” she said, and Orana thought there was genuine affection in her voice—the way she sounded when speaking of Anders and Bethany. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”  
  
Orana bent her head over her work, hiding her small smile. “Thank you, Mistress.”


	10. Chapter 10

On the anniversary of the white lilies, Hawke closed the Keep to everyone but Orana and a handful of guards. She visited Leandra’s grave—Anders had always gone with her in the past, but this time she went alone—and barricaded herself in her bedroom. After an hour or two, the door slammed and Anders heard her stomp out of the wing.  
  
When Orana arrived with his lunch, Anders asked, “How is she?”  
  
She set the tray on his desk. “Mistress is practicing her swordplay.” Orana pursed her lips, eyebrows drawing together with worry. “She didn’t want anything to eat. I even made the Fereldan stew she likes. I don’t know what to do.”  
  
The maid fixed her imploring green eyes on him. He had never known how to behave around Orana, though she seemed to like him; she’d patiently suffered through his lute lessons, and helped mix poultices for his clinic. He had the feeling that, unlike Fenris, she just _liked_ having a mage around. Mages were familiar territory. She liked Merrill and Bethany more than the others, though that might’ve been a function of personality. Varric was nosy, Fenris was prickly, Aveline was intimidating, and Isabela… was intimidating in a different way. But Bethany was sweet, Merrill had a charming naïveté (he supposed), and as for him—well, Orana was still friendly, so Hawke mustn’t’ve explained about the Chantry.  
  
“Maybe _you_ could talk to her,” Orana suggested, with such innocent hope in her thin face that he couldn’t refuse. He took the bowl of stew and a heel of fresh bread to the reception chamber Hawke had transformed into a personal training room.  
  
Hawke was assaulting a practice dummy with a weighted wooden greatsword. She’d torn through the fabric in places, and some of the straw packing littered the floor around her. Anders waited by the door, watching her work. Each stroke of her sword was precise, intentional—not a movement wasted.  
  
He’d missed this.  
  
_This_ was how he had fallen for her, helping her cut down Templars and gangs and demons. Even when Anders was frustrated out of his mind with her attitude towards mages (“The ones who can’t handle themselves need Circles for _protection_ , Anders!”), he’d spent so many nights thinking about her. Not just drafting arguments to change her views—though he’d spent hours on that too—but her body, her determination, her fierce desire to protect those she cared for.  
  
When she noticed him, she relaxed out of her fighting stance, drawing a hand across her sweating brow. “Oh, good,” she said with a rare smile. “Fight me.”  
  
It was so abrupt that he thought he’d misheard. “What?”  
  
She jerked her chin towards a rack of staffs. Anders recognized Orsino’s three-headed staff, holstered beside the ice-crusted stave with which he’d fought the dragon in the Bone Pit. “Pick one. Fight me.”  
  
Anders blinked. “I’m—out of practice,” he said lamely.  
  
“So am I. No mages in the city guard to spar with.”  
  
That she’d sparred at all in the last few months gave her the advantage, but Anders set the lunch tray down and approached the rack of staffs. He gripped the shaft of one with a spiked mace at the tip. It was hot to the touch, and he remembered prying it from Grace’s twisted hands at the Wounded Coast. He pictured the abomination lying dead in the sand beside an unconscious Bethany and faltered. He chose instead a bladed staff that sent a shudder of electricity prickling through him, setting the hair on the back of his neck on end.  
  
Hawke nodded. “Go ahead.”  
  
Before the Keep, she usually sparred with Fenris or Aveline. On rare occasions, Aveline let her spar with the city guardsmen, so Hawke could practice fighting more than one person at once. (Aveline had always joked that it was good practice for the guard, in case they ever needed to fight a dragon “or anything else as destructive as you, Hawke.”) Anders had only dueled her a handful of times. One-on-one fights with Hawke consisted of Anders trying to run far enough to get a spell off before she could hit him. Today she didn’t even have her heavy armor to slow her down—just a dark red shirt over gray linen breeches.  
  
Anders took the first shot. She leapt back, and his lightning scorched the flagstones at her feet. There was time enough for him to cast again—Anders raised his staff and clenched his fist, and a layer of frost settled on Hawke’s clothes. Hawke made a sound low in her throat and charged.  
  
_Shit, shit, shit, keep her **away**_ —Hawke stumbled from his wave of telekinetic force, regaining her footing at the last second. Anders conjured a glyph in her path, but Hawke changed course and ran around it. She threw her full weight into the swing, which would’ve snapped his staff in two if Anders hadn’t managed to duck away. Instead, Hawke slammed her sword into the ground, sending a tremor on the heels of his retreat.  
  
He staggered, catching himself with the staff. Anders scraped the last reserves of his mana and cast a flurry of lightning bolts. _Damn._ _No lyrium._ Hawke charged again, twitching as she threw off the shocks. She turned her sword and struck Anders with the pommel, knocking the wind out of him.  
  
So he had no lyrium. _Fine._ Vengeance was barely accessible now, but Anders reached out for the familiar energy, and the wall he’d put up gave way. Resentment lingered in his mind. The power left him drained and a little lightheaded, with enough mana replenished to better focus his next spirit bolt.  
  
Hawke brought her sword over her head and leapt to bring it down on him. Anders backpedaled and created a cage of arcane energy around her, collapsing it with a gesture. The prison lasted long enough for him to retreat to the other side of the room.  
  
Hawke dropped from the air and snarled. Anders had fought alongside her a thousand times, more than enough to appreciate how she used her anger. Going berserk had kept her on her feet after the Arishok put his sword through her, pushed her to take down Quentin when he’d ripped her world apart, let her cling to the High Dragon’s neck. It came upon her so suddenly that Anders sometimes wondered if she had a spirit of rage inside to match his Vengeance.  
  
She was across the room in seconds, sword swinging in brutal strikes. Anders blocked each attack—either magically or by parrying—but Hawke forced him back, pace by pace, until she had him pressed against the wall with her sword at his throat.  
  
She grinned then, that ferocious, triumphant grin he was used to seeing on a blood-splattered face.  
  
“I win.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) "But why did it take so long to write this (short) chapter?" Well, it's because I ran out of material I'd already written, and because I've never written smut before so I spent a lot of time unsure about posting this. Let me know what you think because I'm really insecure about it.  
> 2) So, yeah, there's smut in this one. If you don't want to read that just skip to below the line to read the post-scene, and I'll see you next week.  
> 

Anders met her eyes, the wooden blade cool against his skin. After a moment her anger relaxed, and she lowered the sword. Their faces were inches apart—then her mouth was on his.  
  
Anders dimly heard her sword clatter to the ground. His staff joined it a moment later. Anders’ hands found her waist, and she had him pressed to the wall with one of her hands in his hair and the other cupping his cheek and _Maker_ , it had been too long since he’d touched her, since he’d held her like this.  
  
Time stopped, suspended, until Hawke pulled away. “My room,” she growled.  
  
Getting to her room was more difficult than expected, walking and kissing and disrobing at the same time—why in the _Void_ was the training room so far from hers?—but they managed. Hawke got his shirt off without pulling away, and threw it on the banister as they made it up the half-flight of stairs to the other wing.  
  
She kicked her bedroom door shut behind them. Before he could move to help, Hawke had taken her shirt off and tossed it aside. His eyes went to the raised white scar that spanned her stomach. Maker, the day she’d gotten it had been one of the worst days of his life. Too much blood, with lyrium bitter on his tongue, and the certainty he wouldn’t be enough to save her…  
  
But here she was, alive and in his arms again, with only the scar to show for the ordeal. His fingers skirted over its twin on her back, barely offset from her spine—the slightly smaller scar Hawke called _The_ _Arishok Exit Wound_.  
  
She moved to pull off her breast band, but Anders got there first. The linen strap joined her shirt on the floor, and he kept his right hand on the small of her back to hold her close while the left moved to cup her breast. He dragged his thumb across her nipple, feeling it stiffen at his touch, and Hawke gasped sharply against his mouth. She didn’t waste a moment, reaching for the buttons where his trousers had grown too tight.  
  
Anders fumbled at the drawstring tie of her breeches with his right hand. Once that was free, he slipped a hand between the cloth and her skin, loosening the knot that held her smallclothes in place. When it, too, came undone, he moved his hand between her thighs, stroking her so that she leaned into him, panting hot breaths on his neck.  
  
Hawke moaned. “ _Fuck_ , Anders.” Her teeth scraped against his neck. Anders’ shudder ran down his spine to pool between his legs. He kept working with two fingers around, then inside her. “Anders.” Her hitched breaths spurred him on until she bucked slick against his hand. “Anders, _Anders_.”  
  
Hawke pulled the rest of her clothing off. Anders’ trousers joined them, smalls and all, in a heap at the foot of the bed. Even that brief separation was too much—he had to have her _now_ , couldn’t bear not to hold her for even a second longer—  
  
He kissed her again, soft and insistent, lips trembling against hers. She only danced her tongue teasingly across his before she pulled back. “Wait,” she said, and for a heartbreaking instant Anders thought this was it, that she was about to send him away again, the way she’d pushed him away ever since she became Viscountess. Hawke rummaged through the top drawer of her bedside table and pulled a glass bottle out. _Oil._ She uncorked it, poured half its contents into her palm, and took him in her hand.  
  
Anders let out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Hawke smiled, feral and beautiful and utterly _obscene_ , and stroked the length of him. He leaned into her. “Hawke, _Hawke_.” He was close, so close—  
  
She pulled away, teasing, smirking, leaving him hard—Anders, wanting, grabbed her by the arms and let her lead him to her bed. Electricity coruscated under his fingertips, sparks swarming across Hawke’s bare skin, darting up her arms to caress her shoulders and neck, bright and tingling. Her moan was more than enough encouragement to use the electricity again—this time with his hands on her hips. She gripped his shoulders and rocked against him in a spasm.  
  
Hawke threw him down on the bed when they reached it, and then she climbed on top of him and they moved almost as one. The bed was too hard and the fire was unlit, but he and Hawke were together, as familiar as they’d ever been. It had been _months_ and now it was like no time had passed at all—or perhaps it was like that first time again, when he’d spent three years wanting her and seeing her every damn day and not doing a damn thing about it. She was here and she was his, right now—and tomorrow that might not be true; he never knew anymore with her—  
  
But this was enough, wasn’t it?

* * *

“I need to apologize,” she said after, when they lay spent beside each other in her wide bed. Her voice halted, hesitant, hitting unseen walls. But she got the words out: “For not being here. And isolating you. I won’t do it again.”  
  
Anders was drunk off contentment, his head pillowed on her warm shoulder. His eyes fluttered shut. The sex was amazing, but _this_ —this afterglow moment with her—he’d missed this more than anything else. He matched his breathing to hers, chests rising and falling in time. “It’s okay.”  
  
“It wasn’t.”  
  
Anders sighed his submission. “I deserved it,” he told her—and he believed that, even after all this time. He should have paid more for the Chantry— _would_ have, if Hawke had let him, if Hawke hadn’t turned him from Justice’s intentions, if Hawke hadn’t stripped his cause down to the number of lives, down to the abstract ideal that made sense only in a world of ideas. Down to an idea that was no longer his, he realized, and there was room in that to breathe.  
  
“No,” she said firmly, and the muscles tightened below his cheek. “You didn’t. Get mad if you want. It won’t happen again.”  
  
He wasn’t mad. Anders drank in her smell, sweat and ginger and iron. Safety. “I know,” he said, and the words settled in his bones. _I know you think I didn’t deserve it. I know you’ll make it better. I know—_ “I love you.”  
  
Hawke sighed, and shifted, and leaned to press her lips to his forehead. “I love you too, Anders.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Music.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5aRKjrYMYw)

The room was quiet but for the rhythmic _shink, shink, shink_ of Sigrun’s axe against the whetstone. At the window, Justice surveyed the Keep’s courtyard, twisting the lyrium ring he wore on his right hand as a mirror to Kristoff’s wedding ring. Anders flipped absently through the book on phylacteries, while Ser Pounce-a-lot slept soundly in his lap.

Sergeant Maverlies exploded into the room, a sword in one hand and a bow in the other. The scabbard and quiver both hung empty on her back. “Seneschal!” Varel rose from his desk. “Darkspawn approaching—a bleedin’ _army_ of them—we sent word to the Warden-Commander in Amaranthine but _they’re coming_ —”

Anders looked at Sigrun and Justice. “Will the walls hold?” he asked, fingering his earring nervously. He already knew the answer.

Sigrun shrugged and said, “Good thing they already had my funeral.” In the firelight, her black brands hollowed her face into a skull—then Anders blinked and it _was_ a skull looking back at him, dripping with black blood. Bile burned in his throat. Behind Sigrun, Sergeant Maverlies and Seneschal Varel crumbled to ash.

They weren’t in the Vigil’s Keep at all—he was in the Blackmarsh with the mud up to his ankles—to his shins—to his knees—he couldn’t move; he was sinking, and soon he’d be _drowning_ —

Sigrun’s grinning skeleton slipped beneath the water and it was him and Justice back-to-back, facing a circle of hurlocks closing in around them. The darkspawn wore Chantry robes, and they advanced with decaying eyes, hissing his name.

_Anders—_

—and the other name, too, that long-buried thing, ashes in a burned barn, mourned in Ridden by a frightened father and a weak mother. The water was up to his chest, and it froze his breath there, an icy fist around his lungs. No staff, no magic when he reached for it, the panic choking his shout when the darkspawn reached for his eyes—

“We will survive,” said Justice, and the voice burned around him and inside him and through him. He was consumed by blue-white light, and the bitter smell of blood and lyrium and fire. Anders heard snatches of voices: Karl—and the Warden-Commander—and Nathaniel—Hawke—Meredith—Karl again, but flat and too calm—and each one was from the wrong time and they pulled him until he was lost, and there was nothing but Justice and the fire and the light, and when the darkspawn lay dead around him he saw the bodies of Rolan and the Wardens and their blood was hot and sweet on his hands, on his lips—

“Anders,” Hawke said. He woke gasping and twisted in the blankets, with Hawke’s hand firm but gentle on his shoulder. _Darkspawn_ —there were darkspawn nearby—he knew, he could hear them—

“Look at me.” She took one of his hands and helped him sit up. Anders let her guide him, but it was hard to focus on her. He wasn’t sure he was in his body anymore. When she spoke, it was from very far away. “Tell me what’s happening.”

Words like _darkspawn_ and _Blackmarsh_ and _Justice_ formed in his mind and died on his tongue. Anders shook his head, breathless. There was no _air_ in here; he was choking, on Blackmarsh water and Warden blood and Justice’s burn. His heart hammered so hard against his ribs he thought it might burst.

Hawke grabbed his other hand. “Breathe in when I squeeze. Breathe out when I stop.”

She squeezed his hands and counted to three. Anders took a few shuddering breaths, letting them out for another count of three when she relaxed her grip. In for three, out for three, and with each exhale the memory of the Blackmarsh retreated. Anders felt the pillow at his back, saw the lit lamp on Hawke’s bedside table, heard her calm counting beside him. His heart stopped racing, and he slowly returned to himself. No darkspawn here—it was just a dream, like so many Blight dreams he’d had before, and he was safe.

Hawke poured him a cup of water from the pitcher beside the bed, and it tasted cool and clean on the way down. Breathing came more easily after that. “Thank you,” he told her. She nodded. She refilled the cup. She didn’t ask about the dream.

She combed her fingers through his sweat-damp hair and pressed a kiss to his temple. When he was finally ready to lie down, Hawke extinguished the lantern and joined him, slipping an arm over his waist to hold him secure and close. Anders fell asleep again with her arms around him.

* * *

“You should cut your hair,” Hawke said. It was a lazy Cloudreach evening that had followed a cool and cloudy day. They lay in bed, Hawke reading a long missive from Markham with Anders’ head in her lap. Lady Pearlpaw perched on Anders’ chest, allowing him to brush her coat and occasionally voicing her approval with a vain meow. 

“What?”

“Cut it,” she repeated. “Maybe dye it.”

“I like my hair this way,” Anders said, defensively touching it in case she had shears ready.

“So do I. But everyone in Kirkwall knows what you look like. I can’t take you anywhere if people are going to recognize you.”

To Lady Pearlpaw’s vocal annoyance, Anders sat up and turned to face Hawke. The cat leapt from his stomach, petulantly settling into her basket near the bed. “Where are you planning on taking me?”

“Bran wants to have a Summerday banquet, since they can’t have the normal march.” Anders recalled the tradition. Children who had just come of age processed to the Chantry in white clothing to learn about adulthood. _Right. No Chantry, no march._ “You should come as my date.”

“Isn’t Varric your usual escort for these parties?”

“I don’t need more people to think I’m sleeping with Varric.”

“You’d rather they know you’re sleeping with me?”

_Would you tell the world, the knight-commander, that you love an apostate and you will stand beside him?_

_I want you right here. Until the day we die._

Hawke shrugged. Which was to say—not a yes, not quite, if only because of the danger. For all her viciousness and viscountcy, she couldn’t protect him if all Thedas came for his blood. “Doesn’t matter what they think. They might as well think the truth.”

“Or something close to it,” Anders murmured. He settled back against Hawke, replacing his head in her lap. Hawke’s fingers found his hair, working very gently through the tangles. Anders relaxed into her touch, contentment suffusing him like a hot drink in winter. His eyes drifted shut. It would be nice to be around people again—and “You’re sure it would be all right, love?”

“I’m not letting anyone get to you. I refuse.”

“Then I’d like to do that. The Summerday banquet. With you.”

“I’ll set it up,” she said, and her voice was warm as mulled wine.

They lay that way in silence for a few more minutes. Then: “What are you going to tell your seneschal?”

“Not sure. Maybe the truth.” There was a smirk in her answer. “He’d probably shit himself.”


	13. Chapter 13

“ _Mistress!_ ”  
  
It wasn’t a shout so much as a _howl_ , and with it Anders and Hawke were both awake. Heart racing, Anders jolted upright out of Hawke’s arms. Hawke kicked the blankets off of them and stumbled to her feet, swearing under her breath.  
  
_Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang._ “Mistress!” Orana wailed again. “Templars—the Templars are here—they want to search the Keep again—the Guard-Captain is trying to get rid of them again but _they’re not leaving_ —”  
  
Hawke reached her armor stand before Anders had the bedside lamp lit. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stood. “Anders.” Hawke had already pulled silverite greaves over her woolen hose when he reached her, and she sat so Anders could buckle the poleyns over her knees.  
  
He fastened the culet and tassets around her waist. “You’re going to fight all the Templars in Kirkwall?”  
  
“They’ve tried this twice already,” Hawke said, pulling her hauberk over her nightshirt. The chains clinked together in a sleek ripple of sound. “If they have a death wish, I won’t deny them.” She grabbed her plate and shrugged it on atop the mail.  
  
Anders frowned. “I know a lot have left,” he said, tightening the straps that held the cuirass in place, “but even you can’t beat all of them.”  
  
“They can’t be worse than the Arishok.”  
  
“Thirty Templars are worse than one Arishok,” Anders said. “Don’t argue, you know I’m right.” He worked his way down her arms, adding armor: pauldrons, couters, vambraces, gauntlets.  
  
“Aveline’s there,” she said eventually. “Some of the guards. And you’re coming, aren’t you?”  
  
“What?”  
  
She jerked her head at his coat where it hung on its own armor stand. “Come on. I’m sure you’re dying to kill some Templars.”  
  
That wasn’t totally true; Anders wanted change, not blood. It was Justice who’d told Hawke he’d kill every last Templar for their abuses—Justice who demanded the deaths, and Hawke who promised them. But there were men like Thrask, naïve as he’d been to trust a maleficar, who saw mages as people, who wanted to change things. He didn’t want to kill _Templars_ , he wanted to tear down the Order itself.  
  
On the other hand, the Templars in Kirkwall were worse than they’d ever been now that Cullen was gone ( _imagine that, Cullen “mages aren’t people” Rutherford as the most **reasonable** Templar in the city_ ), and they were attacking his and Hawke’s home. That couldn’t stand—not when Hawke needed him beside her. Wanted him there. “Yes.”  
  
Hawke was never far from a blade, even in their room. While Anders dressed, she’d moved to their weapon rack, which held two greatswords, a battleaxe, two staffs, and a gilt beech bow from the high dragon’s hoard that neither of them knew how to use well. “Anders. Which—?”  
  
“Cold-Blooded,” he said, tightening the straps of his boots. In the corner of his eye, Hawke drew a greatsword that burst into flames in her grasp.  
  
Anders slipped his black coat on, the weight of its woven-in lyrium almost surprising him after so long. In its slot, a defensive rune pulsed. He felt the leather pouches on either side of his coat and found them empty. “Hawke—”  
  
She was already crossing the room, his staff in one hand and four bottles of lyrium in the other. Anders took them, securing Cold-Blooded on his back and slipping the potions into his bags. Hawke was making for the door, but—“Helmet?”  
  
“Not for this,” she said, and when he looked he saw Dumar’s iron circlet resting on her dark hair.  
  
Anders followed her out of the room, past Orana, who stood outside shaking like a tree in a storm. Donnic Hendyr, his jaw set, was waiting at the top of the stairs. The young elven guardswoman, Lia, stood at attention beside him. Both wore full plate, and Lia knuckled her brow as Hawke and Anders approached.  
  
“Brennan and the others are getting dressed,” said Donnic. “Aveline’s outside stalling, but it won’t hold them this time. I hope you have a plan.”  
  
“The plan,” Hawke said, eyeing the Keep door, “is to scare them off with more than words this time.” Donnic nodded, sensible, predictable, and as one he and Lia readied their weapons. Hawke and Anders followed suit. This, then, was the tableau that greeted the Templars: the Viscountess with her dark crown and flaming greatsword, standing beside the most hunted apostate in Thedas, the pair of them flanked by two fully-outfitted guardsmen of Kirkwall.  
  
Aveline, face burning with fury, pushed past the mob to join their party on the stairs. Donnic moved so she could take her position beside Hawke. “Twenty-eight,” she said under her breath.  
  
Hawke nodded almost imperceptibly. She addressed the Templars with relentless calm. “You should go.”  
  
One of the men at the front of the group answered. Ser Paxley the paranoid, leader of the Templars’ conspiracy theories. “We know you’re hiding the robe that destroyed the Chantry, Champion!”  
  
_This was a bad idea._ Anders’ ears were packed with cotton, all sound muffled except a distant hum. Twenty Templars who wanted him dead or mindless; the last scene like this had ended with corpses and a dark cup of decay sliding down his throat—or else fleeing across the sea from charred corpses in armor. He should panic—he _knew_ he should panic, knew it like he knew the touch of the Fade—but that was far away now, far away and irrelevant. Wasn’t all this—the raid and the Templar’s gazes and bare steel—wasn’t this happening to someone else? Anders stood like a ghost on the stairs and wondered, idly, when he was going to wake up.  
  
Hawke’s voice cut through the fog, clear as a sunbeam, and brought Anders back to himself. “Viscountess,” Hawke corrected, and she stepped forward, Celebrant burning. She looked down on the Templars like the falcon statues that lined the room. “I’ve already told your lot to leave twice. Stay if you want me to take your bloody heads off.”  
  
“Like you did to Moira?” called another—Margitte.  
  
“Ser Moira is alive and well.” Hawke said it with such confidence that Anders couldn’t tell whether she was lying. Orana had said Hawke took care of a problem with a Templar. Anders had seen before how Hawke usually took care of that sort of problem. The bodies left the Amell estate through the cellar to Darktown.  
  
“Dog piss!” This from Ser Hugh. “She was asking questions about that abomination of yours, so you bloody offed her!”  
  
“That’s right!” Paxley pointed an accusatory finger at Hawke. “You murdered Ser Moira, and you’re going to let your apostate lover take over this city and kill the rest of us!”  
  
Anders could hardly breathe. Hawke looked bored with the lot of them. “You Templars made me Viscountess of Kirkwall. I do what’s right for Kirkwall. My personal life is no business of yours.” She hefted her own flaming sword, more terrible by far than the ones the Templars wore across their chests. “Leave. Or die. Your choice.”  
  
_Leave,_ Anders pled silently—and three backed away towards the door, sheathing swords. Five each, then, Anders thought, and with four warriors to lead the charge he could hold his position and shoot spells from the staircase.  
  
The rest of the Templars had not come to retreat. They raised their swords and surged forward.  
  
“Anders,” Hawke said. His hands were already raised to cast. The rush that was haste spread through the five of them before she finished the word. Hawke grinned, all ferocity, all dreadful triumph, and she was down the stairs before Anders realized why: he’d known what she wanted before she asked. He’d been doing it since they woke up.  
  
_They’d_ been doing it since they woke up.  
  
_Like we could before._ Anders smiled too, then, smiled with a certainty the last year had lacked, and prepared to fight.  
  
Aveline was at Hawke’s side in a trice, wrenching two Templar blows away from her back with a shield. On her heels, Donnic advanced, drawing three new adversaries away from his wife. Lia, startled by her sudden speed, looked stunned when she found her sword at a Templar’s throat—but then she remembered her training, pulled the blade back, and bashed him over the head with her pommel. The Templar crumpled at her feet.  
  
Anders threw down a pair of glyphs at the foot of the stairs for protection. Hawke planted a foot and spun, her sword arcing a fiery ring around her. The mob of Templars around her stumbled back. Seeing his chance, Anders blasted ice at them. A few froze solid, skin and armor whitening with the cold. The rest lost their footing on the now-slick floor, going down in a clatter of metal, ice, and stone. Hawke didn’t miss a beat. Her sword left another trail of flame, and the frozen men before her shattered. Severed limbs and broken armor fell at Hawke’s feet, each with a faint red glow beneath the ice.  
  
_Fire and ice. Just like old times._ Anders uncorked a bottle of lyrium and drank it down, wincing at the bitterness. Five Templars dead, five more struggling to gain purchase on the ice. One trapped in his left glyph, two thrown to the ground by his right. Three others incapacitated, two fighting Lia, three on Donnic, four crowding Aveline.  
  
Aveline yelled something full-voiced and unyielding. She bashed two Templars in the face with her shield. Anders fired lightning at the nearest one. It struck her in the chest, and as she convulsed the electricity jumped to the Templars beside her, and to the ones beside them. Ser Margitte crumpled to the ground, eyes staring with only the whites.  
  
“Hawke!” Donnic’s call came an instant before Paxley grabbed Hawke by the hair. He pulled her to him, his sword’s edge balanced on her throat, her sword’s fire reflected in his eyes. Around them, the battle raged. Aveline’s path to her was blocked, the Templars who’d fallen on the ice now recovered. Donnic, blood streaming from his nose, grappled with an ever-growing party of Templars. Lia and Ser Ruvena were brawling, weapons discarded, Lia’s teeth clamped fast to Ruvena’s ungloved arm while Ruvena screamed and flailed kicks at her.  
  
Hawke’s circlet clattered to the stones. Her sword followed it as Hawke clawed at Paxley, trying to free herself—but the man held her fast, and rubies of blood welled up where her struggling had pressed his sword into her neck.  
  
Celebrant’s flame guttered out on the floor. Within his helmet, Ser Paxley’s eyes still gleamed red.


	14. Chapter 14

Paxley pressed his sword harder into Hawke’s neck, spilling more blood. Hawke grimaced and paled. Anders couldn’t breathe. What could he _do_? A cage of arcane energy to crush the Templar—but not from this angle, not with Paxley holding Hawke before him like a shield. How could Anders get her safely away, without hitting her, without hurting her, without startling Paxley into cutting her throat?  
  
_Twang!_  
  
A flaming arrow, inexpertly fired, wobbled a wide arc over Paxley’s head and bounced off the bookcase behind him. The arrow clattered to the floor, its fire dwindling into an orange glow. A gasp of surprised pain came from the hall by Hawke’s room. Anders, Hawke, and Ser Paxley looked up.  
  
There on the landing, terrified eyes shining from a chalk-white face, the dragon’s gilt bow clutched in one hand and the hollow of her left elbow held in the other, stood Orana. “Mistress!”  
  
Paxley gaped at her. “What in the—?”  
  
They had one distracted instant. It was enough. Hawke raised one knee and kicked hard behind her. Paxley fell back and brought her crashing down on top of him—but the sword had fallen from his grasp. Hawke rolled away from the Templar, pulling his helmet off as she did. She tried to stand, but he seized her ankle. Hawke hit the ground again with a cry.  
  
_Pain? No—rage._ Hawke snarled hitting Paxley over the head with his own helmet to loosen his grip. Paxley released her. Hawke crawled toward the wall. The helmet rolled away across the stone. Paxley stumbled to his feet, sword forgotten, and fell upon her. Steel fingers wrapped around Hawke’s neck.  
  
Anders jerked himself into action. He’d freeze Paxley in his tracks and Hawke would shatter him; just like before, their signature move, ice and fire. Anders raised a hand to cast, and a wave of energy caught him in the chest like a battering ram. The room tilted around him, as though he were looking through warped glass. Anders caught himself on the banister, scrambling to defend himself, and found—nothing. No mana, no access to the Fade. _Silenced._  
  
The Templar who’d been paralyzed by his glyph charged him. Her eyes shone with a reddish tint, like Hawke’s when she went berserk. He checked the warrior with his staff and shoved her down the stairs. Still reeling from the attack, Anders turned dizzily towards Hawke. He had to make sure she was okay, had to help her—but he needed his magic to do it. _Maker, when was the last time I was Silenced like this? Kinloch Hold?_ It’d take precious moments for lyrium to set in, and he couldn’t control Vengeance anymore, not enough to cast safely from his own strength, not enough to restrain the spirit if he gave Vengeance the smallest hold on him—  
  
But Hawke needed—  
  
Not strong enough—  
  
But if Vengeance took him and saved her, it would be worth it—  
  
_Hawke—!_  
  
Anders reached for the wall he’d built around himself and found it horrifyingly willing to yield. Vengeance had been waiting for this, waiting for Anders to get desperate enough to need him—and here were the thoughts that were not his, promises to _save Hawke_ , promises to _make things right_ if Anders just let the spirit take over. Anders stood on the cold shore of a poisoned sea, wrath lapping at his mind. He looked at Hawke—he was so sorry—one last look before he’d let go— _it will be better this way_ —  
  
Hawke had reached her goal. She gripped it in a gauntleted fist, the armor painted with her blood. Anders drew back before the waves engulfed him. His world narrowed to Hawke struggling on the floor below, the Keep and the fight and Vengeance’s thoughts forgotten. Hawke kicked out and again brought Paxley to the floor—but his weight forced her down too, hands still tight on her neck, choking her. Hawke threw herself on him, eyes bulging from her red-splotched face. With her free hand, she punched him squarely in the mouth—  
  
—and with her other hand, Hawke drove the ember-tipped arrow into his eye.  
  
Paxley’s scream cut through the fighting. Ruvena stopped kicking Lia. Lia stopped biting Ruvena. Even the Templars fighting Donnic and Aveline glanced away to see what had happened. On the balcony, Orana gave a shriek and turned away, dropping the bow at her feet. Hawke heaved herself off the Templar on hands and knees and crawled from him. Paxley still screamed. He gripped the arrow’s shaft and gave it a desperate yank. It came free, and a pulpy, smoldering mess came with it. Paxley howled. The sound grated against Anders’ teeth, bristling the hair on the back of his neck.  
  
The combatants might have stood in their places all night if Brennan hadn’t led a stream of guards through the barracks door at that moment. They raced to stand beside Anders at the top of the stairs, weapons readied, looking to their captain for orders. Aveline looked to Hawke, who had pushed herself up to lean against the bookshelf. The air-starved flush was nearly gone from her face, but her eyes were bloodshot, bruised, barely focused.  
  
Ser Ruvena assessed the room and, shakily, called the retreat. Kirkwall’s guard turned as one to Hawke. Anders prepared himself for the order: _No mercy. None of them leaves Hightown alive._  
  
Hawke had a hand to her red-smeared throat. More blood seeped between her fingers. “Let them,” she croaked.  
  
For one tremulous moment, the hall stood entirely still. Then everyone moved at once. Hugh and another Templar hauled the moaning, barely-conscious Paxley to his feet and dragged him to the door. The rest limped after them, half their weapons abandoned, the bodies of their dead left in spreading pools of blood. Lieutenant Harley’s unit left with the Templars, a hostile escort to the Gallows.  
  
Anders ran to Hawke, almost slipping on half-frozen Templar blood. Her chest heaved with ragged gasps. Blood bubbled from the deep cut on her neck. Hawke made another hoarse sound and reached for him.  
  
“Hawke, Hawke, I’m here. Shh, I’ve got you.” His magic was back. His sea wall was back; somewhere within him, a tide of impotent fury crashed harmlessly against it. Kneeling beside her, Anders brushed her wound with glowing fingers. Skin and muscle knit together beneath his hand, the cut fading into a thin line across her neck. Hawke took a deep, easy breath, and Anders let out a shaky one. “There. There,” he repeated, to reassure both of them. “You’re okay. You’re fine.”  
  
She lunged forward and captured his lips in a kiss. Anders cupped her cheek with one hand and kissed her back, her comforting warmth beneath him. _Safe. Both of us, safe._ When they separated, Anders rested his forehead gently against hers, and nuzzled her nose with his.  
  
Eventually, Hawke pulled back and gave a curt nod. “Gotta get up.” Donnic was there, towering over them; he took her red right hand and pulled Hawke to her feet. All signs of strain gone, the Viscountess straightened. Hawke walked deliberately to where her spiked iron circlet had fallen. She replaced it on her head and stood calm and solid in the ravaged Keep.  
  
Aveline was picking through shattered armor and defrosted Templar remains. “Hawke,” she called, kneeling beside Margitte’s body. “You’ll want to see this.” She held up a bottle of red liquid, its light pulsing like a heartbeat.  
  
Hawke strode to her. The two women bent over the glowing vial, one wearing a blood-speckled scarf, the other with a scarf of blood drying on her neck. When Anders looked at the bottle, a distorted tune echoed in his head. He pictured the only statue that now stood in the Gallows—Meredith, petrified, twisted, red light shining through her eyes and through cracks in the tarnished once-skin. He remembered the hum they’d heard in the courtyard that day. It was louder now, with an undercurrent of whispers he couldn’t quite make out.  
  
“It’s warm,” Hawke said. Anders wanted to knock the vial from her hand. The red lyrium was more than wrong; it was _poison_ , and Anders couldn’t tell which part of him—mage or Warden—insisted that more strongly.  
  
“It’s just like the idol,” Aveline said.  
  
“Like Meredith,” said Hawke darkly. “There was only the one piece. Where the hell did they get this?”  
  
The three of them fell silent. Aveline, at last, said, “You don’t think…?”  
  
Anders thought he might be sick. “Oh, Maker.”  
  
Donnic approached, blood dripping from his lips and chin. Aveline pulled off her kerchief and handed it to her husband. Donnic pressed it to his broken nose. “Hell of a fight,” he said through the fabric. “I had no idea the Templars were that strong. Did everyone else see them glowing? That’s not normal, right?”  
  
Donnic, Anders realized, was asking him. “No,” he answered. He was still looking at the bottle of red lyrium. “Templars don’t glow. It’s got to be something to do with the red lyrium.”  
  
“No wonder they kept trying to raid the Keep,” Aveline said. “Look what the idol did to Bartrand and Meredith. They both went mad at the end. Paranoid. Maker, it’s a wonder they didn’t lay siege to the whole city.”  
  
Orana had left, unnoticed, after the fight. Now she returned, carrying two overfull pails and some rags. “Lindy has a bath waiting for you, Mistress. I will—”  
  
Hawke cut her off. “ _You_ will go to bed for a well-deserved rest, Orana.”  
  
The elf’s pale eyebrows shot up. “But Mistress—!” She made a sweeping gesture at the scene in the atrium. Water sloshed from her bucket and ran down the stairs, widening pools of blood where it met them.  
  
“We have a full housekeeping staff that can handle this. And none of _them_ fired an arrow that got rid of the Templars.” Two spots of color bloomed high on Orana’s cheeks. “You deserve a raise and a day off at least. Flames, if you want a title, I’ll send Bran the paperwork tomorrow.”  
  
Orana ducked her head, all humility and deference, but Anders saw a proud, bashful smile on her downturned face. She dipped a curtsy, heedless of the blood soaking into her soft leather shoes. “I am happy to help, Mistress.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops. Given the choice between a very long chapter or two shorter ones, I went with the latter. However, Chapter 16 will go up in the next few days and the epilogue will be posted on December 31 - and that will be the end of this story. For now, enjoy this brief argument between Hawke & Anders.

“We’re leaving,” Hawke said back in their room. She’d been washed and healed and wrapped in a silver-threaded robe, after which she’d given a visibly distraught Orana curt instructions to “stop fussing and get some sleep, woman.” Anders sat on the bed in clean underclothes, Lady Pearlpaw curled in his lap. She’d been so scared by the sounds of battle that she was still skittish an hour later, as if to illustrate how unlike Ser Pounce a Lot she was. _No backpacking through the Coastlands for you, it seems._ Anders made gentle shushing sounds and scratched under Lady Pearlpaw’s chin.  
  
He had done his best to heal Hawke’s windpipe and the bruises on her neck, but her voice was still hoarse when she pressed on. “Kirkwall’s too dangerous. Bloody Templars knocking down the Keep door. Next time Isabela comes into port, you and Bethany are going with her.”  
  
Anders opened his mouth to agree—she’d joked about abdicating before, but there was no way around it now—and stopped short. “Me and _Bethany_? What about you?”  
  
“I’m getting to the bottom of this red lyrium thing.” Hawke sat by the fire with Celebrant, its rune inactive, lying across her lap. She oiled her whetstone and stroked the sword against it. “The Ansburg Circle might have something useful, since their library isn’t a pile of ash.”  
  
“Hang on,” Anders protested. “What makes you think I’m going anywhere without you?”  
  
Hawke snorted. She slid her sword against the whetstone again. “I’m not letting you within two leagues of a Circle, Anders.”  
  
Anders was suddenly cold and dizzy. Dismay blossomed like ice crystals through his veins. “Not _letting_ me?”  
  
“You know what I mean.”  
  
“What, you think I’d be safer without you?”  
  
“You’d be safest where there aren’t Templars or Chantry zealots.” Her voice had gained an edge sharper than any whetstone could create. She turned the blade and shaped its other side.  
  
Anders barked a laugh, incredulity bordering on hysteria. The overpacked mattress was too hard beneath him, the room too full of fireplace shadows. “And where’s that? Are we going to sail to the middle of the ocean and drop anchor?” His stomach was sinking, faster and further the more he understood her plan.  
  
“Gwaren’s safe enough. Antiva, maybe. She wouldn’t go north of Rivain. Too many Qunari.”  
  
He was about to hit seabed. “So you’ll just have her dump me in some convenient port town? And then what, I wait for you to show up?” Maker, it’d be worse confinement than the Keep or the Circle. In Kirkwall, he’d at least known Hawke was down the hall, even when she stopped visiting. In Kinloch, at least the fear was scheduled—there was no looking over his shoulder when he knew his tormentors only came with his meals. He couldn’t live like that again—hunted, harrowed, paranoid that every stranger was a Templar or Warden there to drag him back. There were many more who wanted death or worse for him now. He’d never survive it alone. (He knew Bethany and what she thought of him. Being on the run with her meant as much as solitude.) If he had to live like that, alone and afraid, how long would it take him to yield and give Vengeance a companion’s place in his mind again?  
  
Hawke had promised she wouldn’t let that happen. “What happened to not isolating me? What happened to staying with me?” His voice and hands shook. _No wonder she thinks you’re weak._ Anders pushed the thought away. The echo of it lingered, casting a shadow on his mind.  
  
“This is different.”  
  
“This is you making decisions for me again!”  
  
“This is me protecting you,” she snapped. In his lap, Lady Pearlpaw started trembling again. Anders scooped her up and held the cat close to his chest. Hawke put the whetstone down and picked up a square of glasspaper to smooth the edge. “Flames, Anders, the Chantry’s tightening the noose on all mages. You know what they’d do if they found _you_.”  
  
“Which is why I should come!” He was spiraling, words getting worse and wilder in his head, and he had to watch it happen like he was standing outside his body, helpless to stop his shaking hands and reeling thoughts. No—he had to think of something, had to say something that would convince her not to leave him behind. Anders took a deep breath and swallowed his rising panic. “There’s nowhere safer for me than standing beside you. Until the day we die, remember?”  
  
Hawke deburred her blade more vehemently. “I remember. I’m trying to make sure that day isn’t for a long time.”  
  
“I don’t care about having a long life unless it’s with you.”  
  
“Maker’s breath, don’t be dramatic. This isn’t forever, just until we know what’s going on with the red—shit!”  
  
Her hand had slipped on the glasspaper. Blood welled from her first two fingers, dark as pitch in the low light. Without hesitation, Anders set his cat on the bed and crossed the room to kneel at Hawke’s side. He cradled her hand and brought the Fade to his fingertips. “Hawke,” he murmured. His voice and hands were steady now. “I need to be there. Maker, you saw how bad I got the first few months we were here—I have to come with you. I’m only whole when I’m with you.” The cut sealed into a slim white line, another scar to add to Hawke’s collection. “Please. I can’t stand being alone again. I should be there. Wherever you need to go, I can help.”  
  
Hawke stood and raised her hand to her mouth, licking the blood off her fingers. She replaced the greatsword in its spot on the weapon rack and walked back to the bed. Her dark hair was golden in the firelight. She sat beside the cat and leaned forward, elbows on her knees.  
  
For the first time tonight, she looked weary. Hawke had half-gilded hair, and a half-healed gash on her neck, and frown lines deep as canyons on her shadowed face. The whites of her eyes were still red from burst blood vessels. He could see her considering what he’d said, turning the idea over in her mind, inspecting it for flaws.  
  
Hawke buried her face in her hands and let out a long sigh. Anders waited, uncertain, until she spoke. “Start packing. We’ll leave by the end of the week.”


	16. Chapter 16

They left four days later. Aveline promised to keep Bethany safe until she could leave with Isabela in a fortnight. They said their goodbyes to them, and to Merrill and Varric, and to Gamlen and Orana. (Orana would be staying with Aveline and Donnic. Kirkwall’s growing militia, Aveline said, could use someone who knew how to clean armor and weapons, and Orana was happy to stay in the Keep.)  
  
So they took the two best horses from her stables and set out for Ansburg. They went from the Ansburg Circle to the Warden’s Keep in that same city, then east along the Minanter to Tantervale. Charade looked at them on her doorstep and said, so unlike her father, “Come in quickly, cousin. You’ll both be safe here. I have some friends who can look out for you.”  
  
Hawke disliked the idea—the fewer people who knew of them, the better, she said—but Charade’s friends won them discreet passage to Cumberland. Charade’s friends let Anders into the Dragon’s Den and Hawke into the Sun Dome, and when they were finished there, some Friends helped them reach the next people and places their research took them.  
  
It was months later and they were heading northwest along the Imperial Highway when a courier rode up. He was unfamiliar, dark and slight and elven, astride a chestnut hart with straw-colored markings. Atop his vallaslin, he bore a stripe of red ink across his nose. _Varric, then, not Stroud._ Hawke collected the letter and paid the elf without a word.  
  
“Well?” Anders said when the rider had disappeared around a corner.  
  
“Varric sends his best wishes,” said Hawke, skipping down the page, “as always. They found and destroyed more red lyrium near Redcliffe. Something about Avvar— _hm_.” She cut her eyes at him. But whatever Varric had to say about the Avvar, Hawke didn’t elaborate. She fell silent as she read, frown lines deepening on her brow, mouth flattening into a grim line. At long last she said: “Haven fell. It’s Corypheus. I have to go to the Inquisition.”  
  
It took a moment for her meaning to register. Anders felt as though the air had been knocked from his lungs. He remembered the overwhelming clamor of voices in the Vimmark prison—remembered, too, how easily the Carta and the Wardens came after Hawke. “You’re not going without me,” Anders said.  
  
“Don’t be stupid, we’ve seen what Corypheus can do to you.” The implication lay heavy within her words: _the last time that happened, Justice took over._ “And if you think I’m letting you anywhere near those Chantry bastards, you’re wrong.” Hawke folded the letter, slipped it into her bag, and dismounted.  
  
Anders followed suit. Lady Pearlpaw mewled and squirmed in his pack until he let her out onto the grass. She stalked towards a clump of bushes, body so low to the ground that she vanished in the tall grass. “The Chantry’s hunting you too. Remember what Varric said?”  
  
“The Chantry doesn’t want to _execute_ me, Anders. We’re not having this conversation again.” She pulled out one of their maps and unfolded it on a large flat stone beside the highway. Her black mare wandered off to graze, followed by his skewbald courser. “Skyhold’s in the Frostbacks. Stroud’s near the Storm Coast—if it’s Warden shit, he might know something.” She glanced at Anders. “How’s your head? Better?”  
  
She was right; he hadn’t heard darkspawn stirring since they’d passed Montfort. “Yes, but—”  
  
“So you can keep on to Andoral’s Reach like we’d planned. You’d just be one more mage hiding out there, no one would notice. Or find somewhere else around here.” She traced a broad circle on the map that enclosed the Blasted Hills, the Silent Plains, and the Fields of Ghislain. “Doesn’t matter where. Just lay low. Send word to Varric, let us know where you are. I’ll come as soon as this all blows over.”  
  
He stammered, disoriented. “Wh—just like that? You’re leaving now?”  
  
“Sooner I go, sooner I’m back. You can make it to Churneau by sundown. I’ll double back to Ghislain, find a caravan to Val Royeaux or something.” She traced her route with one finger, as if it was that easy. “Won’t take three months, if this Herald of Andraste’s any damn good.”  
  
“I should go with you.”  
  
“ _Anders._ ” She ticked off each point on her fingers. “All the Wardens in Orlais are corrupt or mad. Stroud is hiding in a fucking cave because the Wardens called him a traitor for not going mad along with them. The Templars turned their back on the Chantry to hunt down every mage they can find. Corypheus isn’t dead, so I have to go to Skyhold, which at this point is the Grand fucking Cathedral because everyone with half a claim to Divinity blew up in the conclave.”  
  
His throat felt raw and hot and tight. Anders swallowed hard over the lump in it. “Because of the war I started,” he interrupted. “You can say it. I know you’re thinking it.”  
  
“I’m not.” She was as cool as frostbite. “Changing the world wasn’t going to happen peacefully.” Hawke met his eyes. “I hate to leave you, even for a little while. But I won’t take you there, with the Red Templars and the Chantry and Corypheus. It’s too dangerous.” She refolded the map, as if he’d let her close the discussion that easily.  
  
“Hawke—”  
  
She put the map away. “Corypheus is my responsibility. He won’t survive meeting me again. I need to deal with him.”  
  
_I need you more. I need you here, I need you to keep me safe, I need you to keep me sane._ “Fallon.” He caught her hand, wide and scarred and rough, in his. “Please. Please don’t go.”  
  
Hawke said his name, the one never written in a Circle or Warden roster, the name no one cursed when they thought of the war. She cupped his bearded cheek with her free hand and kissed him, slowly, insistently, with all the wildfire passion that was ever in her touch. When she pulled away, Anders leaned in and kissed her again, carding a hand through her hair, pulling her safe and close, as though holding her now could send his protection across Thedas with her.  
  
“Stay safe, love,” he said when they separated at last.  
  
“I will. Be careful.”  
  
“I will.” Hawke collected her horse, climbed into the saddle, and dug her heels into the black flanks. They took off at a canter toward Ghislain and disappeared down the path. Lady Pearlpaw, her mouth bloodied, came trotting out of the bushes and dropped a dead bird at his feet. Suddenly exhausted, Anders sat on the flat stone Hawke had used as a desk. He watched the bend in the road, hoping to see a black mare riding back to him, until the dust settled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little timeline/canon bending in this one - I know you can't meet the Avvar until after Haven. And in DAI, Hawke says that Aveline took Bethany out of the Free Marches when the Wardens started acting weird, which makes no sense because 1) Wardens weirdness wouldn't really affect a Circle!Bethany's life and 2) Aveline is a very busy woman and if she's running the city she doesn't have time for an escort mission. Isabela makes way more sense; she has a boat!
> 
> Anyway! Next chapter is the last (for real, I promise). Thanks for sticking with me!


	17. Chapter 17

It wasn’t a nice town, especially, but Nessum was a town that badly needed him. Their last healer had run off to lend her talents to the Venatori. (Anders got this story from the barber, who was the de facto surgeon now, and who had no lost love for the mage who’d said her talents were worth more than tending everyday ailments in this backwater.) So here he went by the name Frederick and told his patients he was a hedge mage from Alamar. He mixed poultices and healed broken legs and stayed quiet, and if the townspeople were suspicious of a blond healer from Ferelden, none of them said anything.  
  
Privacy—secrecy—was the way of the Silent Plains, it seemed.  
  
The house was made from stone and thatch, and he’d planted orchids on either side of the sky-colored front door. A brook ran between the house and the path to town, and the painted blue bridge over it hid a little clump of lotus which gave the minnows a safe haven from Lady Pearlpaw’s hunting claws.  
  
Anders kept a routine, and that made the little house feel safer. He woke with the sun, and for breakfast today had toasted bread with raspberry jam. The morning was spent in the herb garden, collecting purple-tipped elfroot leaves and orange-hearted embrium blossoms. Lady Pearlpaw chased butterflies beside the brook. It was early spring, and the clover was coming out in pink and white blooms beneath a sky the color of peace.  
  
Two patients called on him in the afternoon. First was a woman carrying twins, wanting to make sure all was well with the pregnancy—one in breech, but both healthy, and the babe still had two months to right itself. Towards teatime, a farmer came supporting an unfortunate stable boy whose jaw had been broken by a disgruntled mare’s kick. It was easy enough to heal, though the lad wouldn’t be eating solid food for at least a fortnight.  
  
Three others came by for poultices (snake bite, fingers crushed in a door, and rashvine hives—the last purchased by the very cross mother of two sheepish, scratching boys). Anders had made a nice amount of coin by nightfall, and as he went to bed he thought he might risk buying decent robes at the next market day. There were benefits to living on the outskirts of the Imperium, and one was merchants well-stocked for a mage’s needs.  
  
He woke in the dark to the sound of hoofbeats. Anders lay beneath his quilt, breathing lightly, and listened to the metallic scraping of armor joints as the rider dismounted. The gate creaked open, and then heavy boots clomped over the little wooden bridge.   
  
_Templars._ Templars, here in Nessum— _damn_ it, he’d chosen Nessum because it was leagues from Perendale and the closest Circle. The Order hadn’t stationed anyone here in _years_ —yet here they were, marching up to his doorstep.  
  
_But if it’s just the one—_  
  
Well. He was not so out of practice. He could handle one Templar.   
  
Anders rose and grabbed his staff. The footsteps were nearly to the front door. He’d try to freeze them first, he decided, and then the crushing prison—  
  
The front door gave a quiet _click_ as the lock released. Damn _again_ , damn his carelessness, damn his certainty that he wouldn’t need a deadbolt. _There is nowhere safe for you, Anders. You were a fool to forget that._ The words resonated in his head.  
  
The door swung open. Anders raised his staff and prepared to cast.  
  
Blue eyes flicked over him. “Put that away,” she said.   
  
Anders dropped the staff. He opened his mouth, meaning to say “Varric said you went to Weisshaupt,” but instead he crossed the room half in a daze and kissed her. She smelled of sweat and horse, and she was gritty with dust from the road. When he’d dreamed of her homecoming he always imagined her—well, not perfumed, but not smelling of travel, either. It had somehow never occurred to him that Hawke would have ridden miles to return, that the journey would leave sand in her tangled hair and sleepless shadows under her eyes.  
  
This, then, was real.  
  
A gauntleted hand found his hair, and the other arm went round his waist and pulled him to her. The year of empty beds and lonely meals fell away at her touch. He had questions—Varric’s letter had mentioned what happened in the Fade, and that news had stirred Vengeance for the first time in ages—but Anders had no mind for questions now, not with her finally come home to him, not with her holding him and kissing him and—  
  
Anders went for the leather straps, and her armor fell away like leaves blowing off trees in a summer storm—the warm, windy sort of gale that brought welcome rain for dry wells and withered crops.  
  
When they finished greeting each other, he put a pot of tea and a bowl of stew to warm over the fire. Hawke took a swig of Antivan brandy straight from the bottle. Anders asked about Weisshaupt.   
  
“Cold shithole of a fortress,” she said. In the firelight, he could see the silver hair that had come in at her temples. She had a new scar on her chin. It traced a pink line up her jaw on the left side. “The Inquisition has the right idea of what a fortress should be. Nice castle in Crestwood, another one in the Western Approach. The Wardens up north don’t know any more than the idiots in Fereldan and Orlais. I told them about Stroud and got the hell out of there.”  
  
“You didn’t happen to see Nathaniel Howe?” he asked. He put the bowl of stew in front of her. She attacked it with vigor. “Or, er, an angry ginger dwarf?” No chance of Velanna being with the Wardens, he expected—and he wasn’t particularly interested in hearing from Velanna anyway. She’d never liked him.  
  
“No. But,” she said, meeting his eyes, “interesting news about the Hero of Fereldan.”  
  
Anders had never called her by the political titles. She was Cousland or Warden-Commander or Thea, never Hero or Queen or _my lady_. “I’d heard she was… away from Fereldan on diplomatic business.” That was the rumor, at least—the more appropriate rumor, which didn’t have her running off with an Antivan Crow or (more absurdly) the new Arishok. Anders couldn’t believe either of those, not when he’d seen how she looked at King Alistair.   
  
Hawke wiped her bowl with a piece of bread and popped it in her mouth. Around the gravy-soaked bread, she said, “She’s looking for a cure for the Calling.”  
  
That made sense, Anders thought. The Fereldan throne needed an heir, and the royal couple had become Wardens during the Blight. The Calling would claim them both before they could have a child unless something changed soon—certainly before the child was grown, even if they managed to conceive. Not to mention Cousland outright saying she and King Alistair _wanted_ children—wanted them badly, throne be damned. Looking for a way to cure the Taint was, all things considered, the sort of mad, impossible quest of which Theodosia Cousland was particularly fond.  
  
Hawke looked at him, even and serious, and said, “I think we should find her. Whatever’s out there to find, she’ll find it faster with us looking too.”  
  
Anders blinked. He thought, bizarrely, of his herb garden with its purple and orange rows, and his little blue bridge behind the little wooden gate. He’d made a nice life in Nessum, and he’d imagined if Hawke returned it would be for good, and he would keep on as a healer and she would find work as a guard or a mercenary. (Optimistic, if not unrealistic, but imagining even a hypothetical life for them was more than he’d ever done before.) This was the first place that had almost felt like home.  
  
_Almost_ , because it couldn’t be home without her. But his Hawke would not retire domestically to the countryside. And she didn’t give a damn about Grey Wardens, however long she’d spent fixing Weisshaupt. If she wanted to cure the Calling, it was for _him_ , to give him years more than he’d had dared hope. Just a few months ago he’d heard the voices, hissing whispers in his dreams, urging his last march to the Deep Roads—and even though he’d known it was a false Calling, it had filled him with dread. Anders had wanted to die after Kirkwall; it would have been just, then, would have been right for him to die for his crimes and his cause. But now—now that there was an almost-home and a fledgling life with Hawke—  
  
—now that Anders was, for the first time in years, more man than cause—  
  
—now he wanted to live.  
  
So Anders did not mention Nessum or the garden or the merry little brook. Anders said, “When do we leave?”  
  
Hawke’s answering smile was cool and satisfied, like she held a winning Wicked Grace hand. She leaned across the table and kissed him. Anders cupped her cheek, reveling in the feel of her skin against his. When she pulled back, his fingers trailed over the new scar. She said, “In a few days. We’ll need supplies, a horse for you, maps…”  
  
She went on, describing the rough route she thought they might take. The planning of it felt right. He imagined them on the road again—Anders and Hawke against the world, like those first months after they’d abdicated Kirkwall—and that was right too. For the first time Anders could picture a real future for them, difficult (it would always be difficult, knowing them) but together, and it was more than enough.  
  
They’d have a lot to do tomorrow. He was looking forward to it. But for now—  
  
“It’s late, Hawke,” Anders said, rising from his seat. “Come to bed.” Hawke left the half-full bottle uncorked on the table. Anders kissed her hairline, her forehead, her lips, and they both came away smiling. He took her warm hand in his and led her into their room. Hawke shut the door behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whether you've been following since the beginning or just found this story, thank you for reading! I've really enjoyed writing this fic and I hope you enjoyed reading it. I intended this to be the end of Fallon and Anders' story, although I do have some sequel ideas kicking around... let me know what you think.


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